Hardest Battles We Fight
by PossumSoul
Summary: She gave up everything for something that she just lost. It was her all or nothing. Now that it's gone, she realizes just how much she gave up, and how much of it wouldn't just sit around and wait for her to come back. Especially not him. (Post Watershed[5x24]) *COMPLETE W/ 2 PART EPILOGUE*
1. Chapter 1

She heard the yells when she was being escorted to his office. Everyone heard the screaming.

She can feel the air of nervousness and tension from here, sitting in a small, uncomfortable plastic chair outside the door to the director's office. No one knows what it's about, but everyone is smart enough to know it's about her, just another faceless nobody in a sea of nobodies in a profession where you're meant to be faceless. Everyone makes an impact of some sort here. It's not always meaningful, never credited to the person responsible, and almost never the impact people think they are making.

She was just trying to do the right thing.

With another barrage of shouting coming muffled through the door to her right, she sees the secretary eye the door with the same twinge of fright and nervousness she has. She pretends not to notice and flicks her eyes back down to her lap, to her perfectly creased black slacks and the binding white fabric of her blouse, rolling her shoulders to adjust the shoulder pads in her blazer. Once the one-sided yelling stops after a few seconds, the phone on the secretary's desk lets out a shrill, quiet ring.

The secretary pokes her headset, "Yes, Sir?"

Her neck craned, she peeks over to watch her reaction.

"Right away, Sir." The secretary says and pokes the side of her headset again as she quickly looks back down to her lap. "Agent Beckett?"

She looks up with a lift of her brow, pretending as if this meeting is nothing out of the ordinary.

"Director Williams will see you now."

Beckett musters up a feigned smile and presses her sweaty palms down onto her thighs as she stands. Clearing her throat, she makes for the door. She pauses as she grasps the long, cold handle and tries to stop the nervous gallop in her heart, the sickening churn in her stomach, and the weakening cold sweat that's washing over her entire body.

She was just trying to do what's right. Just like she always has.

After a few long seconds where she's sure that the secretary is judgementally watching her, she cranks down on the handle of the door and pushes it open, striding inside with one long, here-goes-nothing stride. Her neck craned, she looks ahead to the large wooden desk that sits in the center of the large office, with the director standing at the windows that make up the entirety of the back wall.

He has one hand on his waist underneath his suit jacket and the other hanging down by his side, holding a manilla folder. "Sir?" She announces her presence to him as she gently closes the door, cranking down on the handle again to make as little noise as possible, wanting to sound as small as she feels.

The director waits until the door is closed to look over his shoulder to her, sending her a deathly cold glare. She feels her throat close, knowing the look is one of someone who's about to make her entire world a living hell.

And with a quick second of retrospect, he might be a little late.

She shoos the thought away like a dust mite and quickly strides through the center of his office, her eyes locked onto the carpet as she approaches his desk between the two chairs sitting in front of it. Director Williams lets out a long, frustrated sigh as he turns around, takes his hand off his waist to run over his balding head and for a moment, she thinks he'll go just a bit easier on her than she thought.

But when he raises the manilla folder above his head and slaps it down onto his desk as forcefully as he can, she jumps. She gulps passed the rock in her throat and clasps her hands together.

"You were told..." he hisses through clenched teeth as he pushes his jacket back at the bottom to plant his hands on his waist, "to _back... off." _

"Sir, I-"

"_What part of that..._" he shouts at her, leaning over his desk, "did you not understand?"

Beckett pauses for a long moment to see if it was a real question or not. When all she feels is his eyes bore into her, she gathers her voice again. "Sir, Abdalla gunned down an innocent woman. I couldn't just-"

"_No!" _He spits at her, making her swallow the rest of her rebuttal. "You didn't understand."

"Sir, Hassan Abdalla murdered someone in cold blood and being an enforcer of the law, I couldn't just let that go. When he drew on me, I had no choice." She finally takes her chance to defend herself. After another tense few seconds, she looks up to the director to see his expression hasn't changed, just keeps coldly staring at her with his knuckles pressed into his desk. "I did what I was trained to do and I put him down."

The director lets out another huff through his flaring nostrils and leans back off his desk.

She takes his silence as an opportunity to continue to justify herself. "And to be honest, Sir, I don't understand why this is-"

"Hassan Abdalla," he stops her in a calmer, but somehow more imposing voice, "was an undercover intelligence asset."

Beckett's heart shrivels and her blood drains, feeling her life drain from her entire body. Because she knows there's only one way she's leaving this building.

"He was as an Isreali agent on loan to us for a joint operation into the terror cell that you and your partner were ordered to help track down."

Her throat shakes intensely for a second but she's quick to push it down. "Sir, that doesn't justify him..."

She trails off when the director puts his hand onto his computer screen and turns it toward her. When she looks at it, she sees the same surveillance footage she saw that sent her to track the killer down in the first place. Abdalla on the left of the video, the woman he gunned down on the left holding up her hands in surrender. "Tell me what you see, Agent Beckett." The director orders as he plays the video by clicking the space bar on his keyboard.

The video plays and she watches it again, seeing the muzzle of Abdalla's gun flash three times and the victim fall to the ground. "I see Abdalla fire his gun three times, killing Nancy Jenkins... Sir."

"Look..." he trails off and pokes a few more keys on his keyboard, making the video zoom into Abdalla's gun, "again... Agent Beckett."

The video plays again and the muzzle flashes, but when the zoomed-in video plays... she knows. "There's no recoil." She answers with wide, cold eyes, as the last of her life drains from her body.

"I'm not sure how you got this job without knowing that blanks don't give off recoil, Agent Beckett." He seethes through clenched teeth.

"But..." she tries, her dry eyes finally blinking as her head shakes. "But the woman went down... there was blood at the scene." She says and looks up to the director for answers. "I saw the body, Sir."

"The woman in the video was a junior agent working undercover." The director answers, stone-faced. "And the body you saw was of a young girl that died of a drug overdose and had no one to claim the remains."

The air gets pulled from her lungs at that. She doesn't know if it's because she's here for pursuing justice for a victim that wasn't even murdered... or if it's because she took this job eight months ago thinking she wouldn't be asked to see doing this type of thing as right. "Sir, I didn't-"

"_You weren't supposed to know!" _He shouts again, pounding his knuckles on the surface of his desk. "You were told," he continues, pointing at her, "to back off. A direct order from a senior agent should have been enough. But because you wanted to play vigilante, not only do I have the head of Isreali intelligence demanding answers, all leads we had on the terror cell have vanished."

"Sir, if I was just told that he was undercover..." she starts pleading with a desperate shake in her voice.

"There were _four _people," he shouts again, "that knew of his existence, Agent Beckett. The identity of an intelligence asset is on a _need-to-know _basis!" The director lets out a huff and after a few seconds of staring at her, he shakes his head and paces back toward the windows. "You're a _field _agent for the AG's office." He insults her, turning back around with a wave of his arm. "You think you're entitled to know everything, what, just because you came from some New York homicide division?"

"No, Sir, I-"

"You _follow _orders, you investigate what we tell you, and if you're told to back off of something, it's for a _damn good reason!" _He shouts, picking up the manilla folder again and slamming it down.

The director shakes his head again while Beckett swallows and looks down to the floor. After a tense moment of complete silence with the director facing out the window, she manages to speak. "What happens now, Sir?"

"Normally," he signs and turns around, sending her the same cold, angry glare as before, "I'd have you arrested for treason and whatever else I could think of for screwing up an operation this badly."

Beckett feels her whole world collapse on her when that's mentioned. The rest of her life, spent in a windowless, concrete room because she was trying to do the right thing.

"But..." he continues after leaning off of his desk, "I've been told that... given your record with the NYPD and... given the circumstances... to let you off easy."

Beckett swallows thickly but doesn't let herself relax at the thought just yet. "Easy, Sir?"

The director sighs deeply and flips open the manilla folder in front of him and flicks something out of it to the edge of his desk. "What's this, Sir?" She asks after reaching forward.

"A plane ticket."

She takes the ticket in her hand and flips it open. "New York?"

The director turns back around and crosses his arms. "You're fired."

Her heart quivers in her throat, feeling a very odd mix of intense relief and heartbreaking shame and loss. She had her whole life staked on this job. She gave up everything for this job.

She gave up... absolutely everything.

Feeling her eyes burn coldly, she nods and turns to make for the door. "And Beckett," the director stops her after she takes a few steps. She turns to see the director glaring at her. "What I just told you is still classified. You tell anyone, it will mean my letting you off easy will mean nothing."

Feeling lifeless and beaten, she nods and turns back to the door. "Understood, Sir."

She opens the door, that seems much heavier than before, seeing her partner waiting for her at the door by the secretary's desk with two large agents behind her to escort her out.

* * *

Alexis should be home from class in a little while.

The neighbors across the street are supposed to come over and have dinner with them. It's a Friday after all and Greg wanted to break in the brick barbeque he just finished building himself a few weeks ago. His wife is nice and easy to talk to. Greg is a pretty decent guy. Alexis seems to like having actual neighbors. They're good people.

That's why he stayed out here. Everyone's just... good people. Everyone is always nice and friendly. They know him by name now.

Castle lays back in the living room on the couch, his legs crossed and his feet propped up on the arm, his eyes closed. There are certain times when he just likes to lay back and listen to the quiet. Getting out of the city made him realize just how noisy it is. He has the same realization whenever he used to travel out to the Hamptons. That was always his favorite part of going out there. But here, it's something else that drew him.

After a few more minutes, Castle feels her nuzzle her nose curiously against his neck, them up to his ear. He chuckles with a smile. "Hi, Sasha."

She lets out a small whimper into his ear and he feels her breath start fanning off his cheek.

Castle opens his eyes with a smile, staring at the ceiling. "Alright, fine, come on." He nods his head over.

Without any hesitation, Sasha jumps from the floor onto his chest, scrambling wildly to get comfortable on his chest. Castle laughs as he pets his hands into the thick fur of his dog and wrestles with her until she's lying sprawled out in his side in between him and the back cushions of the couch, her tail tickling his bare feet as it wags excitedly.

"You're just convinced you're a lap dog, aren't you?" He asks his German Shepard, Collie mix. She answers by moving her head back until her snout is pointed straight at him, her face hidden in the crease of his arm. Castle laughs and rubs her chin. "Yes, aren't you?" He plays with her, scratching her rib cage.

Castle relaxes back into the couch as Sasha settles down, now just casually running his hand up and down his dog's side, starting to zone out again.

He never asked Alexis to follow him out here. But when she told him that she'd decided to transfer to OSU, just a forty-five-minute drive or so, he wasn't going to pretend not to be happy. And she seems really happy out here with him, just the two of them. Well, three counting the large, mostly fur, dog laying sprawled out half on top of him.

"Alright, come on." He tells Sasha, patting her side as he starts to lean up off the couch. Sasha takes her cue and jumps off him and back onto the floor, shaking out her fur as Rick sits up.

The jangling of keys and the turning of a doorknob makes Sasha let out a single bark before Castle looks through the window on the door to see the familiar flare of his daughter's hair. And right as the door opens, Sasha knows who it is and starts to whimper excitedly as Alexis puts her keys down onto the table by the door and leans down to pet her. "Hey you."

Castle smiles and notices Alexis holding a magazine, but pays it no mind. "Hey, pumpkin." He says and stands up.

"Hey, Dad." She smiles over to him as he comes over to her to kiss her on the cheek.

"What's the magazine for?" He asks casually as he turns to head into the kitchen, Sasha by his side.

"I picked it up when I stopped for gas on my way home." She tells him as she follows. "I thought you'd want to see it, if... you haven't already heard."

"Heard?" He asks, pulling open the fridge to grab a bottle of water. "What am I suppose to have heard about?" He continues, twisting the cap off and taking a drink.

Alexis stands on the other side of the island in the large, spacious kitchen and puts the tabloid on the surface, pointing at the article headlined in the top corner.

_Playboy Richard Castle in hiding? What caused the writer to disappear and where he is now REVEALED! _

The picture is of him, head down and sunglasses on, in an open flannel shirt and a grey t-shirt underneath, walking out of the local grocery store. "Hmm..." He says and goes over to the trash can to toss the cap away.

Alexis turns to follow him, curious. "You're not worried about it?"

"Nope," He smiles over to her and places another kiss to her cheek to reassure her that all is well with him. "It's in the past."

* * *

_A/N: Lucky for you guys, I got bored with Borderlands 3. Ever want to read a story that genuinely has Beckett chase after Castle for a change? ;)  
_


	2. Chapter 2

Her head bobs back and forth with the road, McCord not bothering to dodge the pot holes.

The fear and dread, shame and guilt has passed. It was gone by the time she loaded her stuff from her desk under the supervision of everyone around her watching her. It was replaced by a frozen simmer of anger and impatience by the time McCord offered to carry the box for her as they escorted her out to her car. The box is sitting in the back seat and she can hear the pencils and pens roll back and forth in the bottom as they move through the streets toward her apartment, an annoying but somehow poetic sound. Thrown without care from where they belong, now rolling around aimlessly looking for a home in the bottom underneath everything else that matters.

"You want to talk about it?" McCord asks, no inflection in her voice.

Beckett stares out the window wordlessly like an obstinate child. Punished for trying to do the right thing. Fired from a job she gave up everything for. Forced to go back to a place she ran from... all for trying to get justice for a victim that wasn't even murdered.

She sees McCord nod her head in the transparent reflection on the window. McCord flicks the turn signal and hangs a right to turn onto Beckett's street. "I warned you to back off, Beckett." Beckett can only grit her teeth in frustration. "I thought you learned that this isn't New York where you can just-"

"Can we not talk about this, please?" She spats, whipping her head over to send her partner a stern glare.

McCord gives her another single nod and pulls to a stop on the curb opposite her apartment building. "We should hurry," she says while taking off her seatbelt, "your flight leaves in two hours."

Beckett rolls her eyes wide as she climbs out of the passenger side and darts off ahead of McCord, passing behind a rented van and the purple sedan of her upstairs neighbor. She's through pretending that McCord actually cares about her outside of a work setting. They've had each other's backs but she can't call them friends in any sense of the word.

"Can we just get on with this?" Beckett calls behind her, moving quickly toward the concrete stairs that lead down to her basement level apartment. "I still have to..." she trails off and slows to a stop when she sees her apartment door open. After a moment, out walks a heavy set, bearded man walk out with a large cardboard box in his hands while two more follow behind him, carrying her sofa out the door.

"You got it?" The one moving the coach asks.

"Yeah, just... just move it to the..." The other one in front says as they flip her coach over.

"Whoa whoa _whoa_!" Beckett yells and quickly jogs up to the one carrying the box, pushing against the front to stop him. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The man carrying the box opens his mouth but seems at a loss as he looks over his shoulder to the men in the middle of carrying her coach out of the door. "Uh..." he tries.

"We're the movers you called." The one in front says.

"Wha- I didn't call any movers. What the hell gives you the right to go rifle through my stuff?! Put it-"

"Beckett!" McCord says, coming to stand next to the man she's stopping. "I called them." She tells her, leaving Beckett at a loss of anger and helplessness. McCord turns back around and waves at the movers. "Go ahead."

"You sure?" The second asks.

"Yes." McCord waves again and then goes to push against Beckett's shoulder to get her out of the way.

McCord pushes her until she's being corralled down the steps and shimmying around the movers moving her coach. Beckett waits to explode until she sees what kind of damage they've done to her apartment. "You couldn't have warned me that you hired a bunch of strangers to ransack my apartment?" Beckett asks as she sees all her cupboards are open and left bare and the living room is already stripped of all furniture.

"I thought you'd appreciate it once you got over the fact that I didn't ask you first." McCord says from the doorway.

"Well, I'm sorry, I don't." Beckett snaps back angrily and storms into her kitchenette. "I just got fired from my job for trying to catch a murderer, Rachel. Forgive me if I have a little trouble with..." she trails off after opening her fridge and already finds it empty. "Son of a..." she seethes as she flings it closed and spins around to lean against the counter.

"Beckett..." McCord tries as she moves around the scattered lamps, shelves, and picture frames. "You got really lucky, alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know that." She impatiently waves off. "Am I not entitled to be angry after being lied to by everyone in the department?"

"Why can't you understand that it's just-"

"It _shouldn't _be just part of the job, McCord!" She fights back. "I was never asked to look the other way on things as a homicide detective. It was either right, or it was wrong, and I knew what side I was on."

"Beckett, we don't deal in the black and the white." McCord says in a softer tone, trying for the thousandth time to try and get her to understand. "We deal in the grey so that there can be a black and white. That's what I've been trying to tell you."

Beckett's nails dig into the surface of her counter when she hears that, feeling hot angry, furious tears boil at the back of her eyes. "They _lied _to me about a woman being murdered, a murder that _they staged,_ and I'm the bad guy for letting them fool me?"

"Beckett," McCord sighs, "if we're told to back off, you have to know it's for a good reason."

"Well, I'm sorry if I'm just not-" She cuts herself off when the moves silently move back into her apartment, one of them staying in the living room to gather the small clutter and two of them moving down the hall toward her bedroom.

"Get the dresser first?" One of them asks.

"Yeah, get the bed frame last and stand it up." The other answers.

Once they're out of earshot, McCord continues after a small sigh. "Look, why don't I buy you a quick dinner before you take off, let these guys finish."

"No," Beckett raises her hand, "I have to call my cousin Sofie and tell her I'm moving back into my apartment, then I have to call the NYPD and try to get my old job back. I have too much I need to do."

McCord nods and her eyes trail away from her. "There's one more thing I should tell you."

Beckett lets it go through her ears as she listens into her bedroom, where she hears the drawers of her dresser being taken out. Her blood igniting, she darts out of her kitchen and into her bedroom where the movers are taking out her drawers to move the dresser. "What are-"

The freezes when the second mover grabs the knob of the drawer on the third row, second down. When he starts to pull it open, she snaps.

She jumps forward and grabs the mover's wrist and twists it around, pulling his arm behind him forcefully and pressing his head into the surface of her dresser.

"Whoa, lady!" The mover strains.

"Beckett!" She hears McCord shout from the doorway.

Beckett lets go of his wrist and pushes on his shoulder to send him staggering into the wall, eyeing him evilly. "_Stay away from that drawer!" _She shouts emotionally.

"Beckett, get out here." McCord orders her while pulling on Beckett's arm, dragging her out of the bedroom. Once she's out, McCord pulls her ahead of her and then leans back into the bedroom. "Leave that drawer in, please?" She politely asks them, not wanting to cause any more problems.

Beckett, the flare of her temper having faded, gets her reaction under control and takes a breath, storming back into her living room. "What, is he gonna press charges?" Beckett sasses McCord as she comes up to her, running a hand through her hair in frustration. "It would add another thing onto the list of things screwing up my life." She says, her voice letting a shiver sneak through at the end.

McCord lets out another deep sigh as her eyes soften toward her partner. "Come on," she says, waving toward the door. "We'll go to the drive through."

* * *

"Ahh..." Greg sighs as he leans back in the swinging bench next to his wife. "I've gotta tell you, Rick." He says, putting his hand on his stomach. "That steak was good."

Cecilia smiles and crosses her legs while leaning into her husband's side, smiling over to Castle. "What's your secret? There was a taste in the marinade I couldn't place."

"Balsamic vinegar." He answers, an IPA hanging loosely from his hand by the neck.

"When are you gonna build us one of those, huh?" Greg asks him, pointing over to the brick barbeque Castle has spent the past week building.

"Oh, no, honey?" Cecilia says, putting her hand on her husband's chest. "Please, we have other things to worry about now." She says, putting a hand on her stomach. Castle smiles sincerely, happy for the couple.

"You're pregnant?" Alexis asks her.

"Mmhmm," she nods with a smile.

"Congratulations! You know, I'm..." Alexis trails off, looking between her dad and the couple, Castle looking over to her with a small, nervous twinge in his throat. "I'm actually studying pediatrics in college."

Castle feels his soft smile start to grow. "You are?"

Alexis looks over to her dad with her usual bright smile and crinkled eyes.

"Since when?" He asks.

"I declared my major a few days ago." She answers.

"Well, good for you." Cecilia says. "You know, my sister works for the county as the coroner. She just got the job a few weeks ago. Maybe you could study with her if you ever need it."

"Actually," Alexis continues, "I actually interned with the medical examiner for the NYPD in New York."

Castle feels his heart lurch into his throat at his daughter suddenly unlocking the Pandora's box to those memories, suddenly tossing himself into a fit of cold sweating, palpitations, and uneven heartbeats. But he plays it off with his usual casual smirk. It's the reason he stayed out here, after all. It was just another life that he wasn't meant to live. "So, Rick," Greg asks him and Castle gives him his attention, "I never really asked you."

"What's that?" He asks as he takes the last foam swirling around the bottom of his IPA.

"What brought you out here exactly?" He asks, trying to make conversation. "I mean, you're a famous novelist from New York city, now you're living all the way out here in Crestfield?"

"Well," he sighs, playing it off, "it started as an extended summer vacation. At first, I was renting out the house. But eventually, it just... grew on me I guess."

"It's nice out here, huh?" Cecilia follows up.

"Oh, it's beautiful. Right by the lake," he points behind him to the lake, the shore curving away from the house, "but mostly it was the people."

"What do you mean?" Cecilia asks.

"I don't know, just..." Castle shrugs, "people out here are more... human. Everyone in New York is just, it's like they're in their own bubble."

"Yeah, nobody looks at you as really there." Greg says back with a nod.

"Exactly," Castle nods.

"Yeah, I grew up in Baltimore. You couldn't pay me enough to go back."

"You like it out here Alexis?" Cecilia asks.

"Yeah, I love it." She smiles. "It hasn't been just me and Dad in a long time. And even longer since he was home as much as he is now. His work with the NYPD kept him out a lot."

"Oh, that's right," Greg points out, "I remember reading that. You were a consultant for the NYPD."

"Mmhmm," Castle confirms while he hides his expression by taking an imaginary sip from his empty bottle.

"Hmm, I'm surprised they let civilians do that kind of thing." Cecilia points out. "What made you quit?"

Castle gulps and looks down to the patio floor. "Uh... just..." he feigns a frown and shrugs his shoulders. It seems like they don't read the tabloids. "My partner got promoted out of the precinct." He says, looking over to Alexis, who's eyeing him worriedly with a sorrowful expression as if she's apologizing for letting them bring it up. "And suffice it to say, my pull with politicians forcing law enforcement to put up with me bugging them ends with the New York city mayor."

They both seem to nod acceptingly as the conversation dies down. After a moment, Greg looks at his watch, "Oh, honey, we better go. It's getting kinda late."

"Well, we should at least help clean up, sweetie."

"No, I got it. Go ahead." Castle waves them off with a smile.

"You sure?" Cecilia asks.

"I'm sure. It was nice seeing you guys again." He lifts his hand in another wave as they make their way around the corner of the house and back across the street, both of them stopping briefly to love on Sasha, who's on her lead outside between two trees that gives her enough liberty to roam without being chained up.

"I'm sorry, Dad." Alexis says in a soft, honestly apologetic voice.

Castle nods with a heavy smile. "You know, sweetie..." he struggles to start, "you didn't have to cancel your trip for me. After she left, I know I was in a bad place, but you-"

"No, Dad," she stops him, getting up off her chair and moving over to him, leaning down to put her arms around his neck. Castle chuckles and reaches up to hug her back. "I'm happy out here. I'm just sorry that they brought it up."

"Alexis," he sighs contently, glad it's over. She leans back with a worried twinge in her brow. "Eventually..." he sighs and stands up in front of his daughter, "it will be just like any other break up. I've accepted what happened and I've moved on. Just... this one took a bit more... moving, that's all."

Alexis sighs hard and lets her shoulders slump. "But Dad, she didn't even come to meet you."

"Alexis," he chuckles.

"She just left, you didn't even get to-"

"Alexis." He stops her with a smile, putting his hands on her arms. "You have an awfully strange way of being sorry for the neighbors bringing up my break up."

Alexis smiles, almost bashfully, running a hand behind her ear. "Sorry."

"It's okay, pumpkin." He smiles. "I've got some leftovers Sasha's been eyeing me for for the last two hours, okay?" Alexis nods and heads inside through the back door.

Castle sighs deeply to himself and grabs what's left of the meat and heads through the yard over to Sasha.

Eventually, it will be just like any other break up for him. The only difference with this one is he can't go back to who he was. He made himself into someone better for her. And at the end of it all, it still didn't matter. Maybe he should have stayed and just argued with her in her apartment that afternoon. At least then, he would have gotten her break up straight to his face instead of her just leaving. She never did get back to him after he called her that next afternoon. He waited for her to show up, gave her some benefit of the doubt when she didn't.

Eventually, he will be over all of that. All he needs to happen now is eventually to actually get here.

* * *

_A/N: I was going to put the context of the last paragraph into a summary, but never figured out a way to do it. So uh... no, I'm not making this easy. Not at all. Possible, but not easy. Also, instead of trying to research a town that I've never been to, I decided to just to make one up. _


	3. Chapter 3

It's not exactly comforting being back in Manhattan. It's nostalgic, but not in the sense that it gives a sense of familiarity or security. Almost as if recognizing a kid who used to be the schoolyard bully as an adult.

Beckett's flight had gotten in late and at the end of it all, she was exhausted of emotion, had nothing left for any no bit of bad news to take. She had caught a cab from JFK and just decided to go to her dad's place. She had snuck in but it looked like he was out of town, probably on business. Waking up off the couch in the living room, still in her black slacks and white, scratchy blouse, she just decided to run her fingers through the frizzy mess on her head and tie it back into a low ponytail and get down to work.

With one call, she had an appointment set with the commissioner and is headed there now on the subway. While sitting in the throngs of people in the car with her, she sifts through her personal email. She doesn't check it all that often but McCord said that she'd email her a link to where the movers were delivering her stuff. She had a storage unit rented out for a month and is just searching for which one it is. She finds the email and after seeing that her stuff isn't due to be delivered until tomorrow, she scoffs to herself, rolls her eyes, and lets her head fall against the bar she's hanging onto, slipping her phone back into her pocket.

Left in the noisy silence of the subway car for a moment, she remembers how useless her self discipline in not letting her thoughts wander is now.

She likes to think she's done a fairly decent job of it, all things considered. She had very important things to distract herself with. Her job, her assignment, the assignment after that, the one after that, if the assignment before was really closed, if the one she was on made her a target. It was a demanding job.

But now she's back home. She's working to get her old life back. She knows it's only a matter of time.

She never had time for that one big break down. No kidding, she thinks briefly, smirking to herself. It was the big break down that she was trying to get away from. She still has the voice mail saved on her phone, but she only played it the one time. Even so, she gets the same knot in her system every time she has to check her voice mail and sees the one she can't bring herself to delete.

She needed his arms last night.

The subway stalls to a halt and she quickly darts out of the door before the rush comes clogs her way and up the steps, briskly walking ahead of the usual flow of foot traffic. The air is wet with a rain that hit last night, and the tires of the taxis are still slushing through the puddles. The city seems more depressing than she remembers it being. She shakes the thought away and quickly makes the last few blocks before she reaches the commissioner's office.

She can't help but feel a real, soft smile bloom onto her exhausted face as she sees the seal of the NYPD above the door. A warm, familiar feeling of real purpose is starting to flare in her stomach. It's a feeling she hasn't felt in a long time. Knowing what right and wrong are, knowing what side she's fighting for, it's a powerful feeling now looking at that seal.

She pushes out a content sigh and jumps up the stone steps and pulls the door open, quickly taking the elevator up to the third floor and stepping out and finding the secretary sitting at her computer, lifting a paper to-go coffee cup to her lips as she types one-handed. Beckett stops momentarily, her eyes locking onto her cup, but the tide only lasts a second before she reverts her eyes to the ground and announces her arrival.

"Ahem..." Beckett clears her throat broadly.

The secretary, an older red-headed woman, if not a bit homely, looks up over her glasses and recognizes Beckett right away. "Mmm..." she exclaims over her coffee, and after downing it, continues, "you must be Kate Beckett."

"Yes." She says with a smile.

"Oh, please," the secretary says and stands up, "Commissioner Winslow is expecting you."

"Thank you." She says under her breath and walks past the secretary's desk and through the door ahead of her.

In the office, the police commissioner sits behind a large, oak desk, his phone to one ear, and a pen in the other. At the sound of the door, he looks up and gives her a wave inside. She nods, shuts the door behind her and meagerly makes for one of the leather wingbacks sitting in front of his desk. She sits down and clasps her hands together and looks down to the carpet as the commissioner smiles to whoever's on the other end of the line.

"Alright, I'll have that on my desk by..." the commissioner readies his pen, "Monday, good. Alright, yeah, you too." The commissioner clacks his receiver down and gives her a big smile. "Kate Beckett." He says to her and extends his hand over his desk.

She smiles and gives his hand a firm shake. "Good to see you, Sir."

"You too, you too." He says and leans back in his chair. "Gates told me you made the big leagues in DC."

Beckett chuckles breathlessly and looks back down to her lap. "Yeah, I did." She agrees, skimping on the details.

"Well, what brings you back here? Career cop like you, DC would be a dream job." The commissioner asks her, maybe complimenting her, leaning on an elbow.

"Well, Sir..." She trails off, at a loss as to how to explain it. She hadn't given it any thought. She... she can't tell people she was fired. For what? According to the books, she's supposed to be in jail right now. Deciding only on a whim, she lets it out. "The job in DC wasn't exactly what I thought it was."

Commissioner Winslow raises his brow in surprise. "Oh? How so?"

Beckett nods, "The AG's office just seems... more interested in an area of law enforcement that I didn't sign up for. I mean," she stops, looking up to him again, "they have an important job, but... I just wasn't cut out for it. I'm..." she smiles, almost proudly, "I'm a homicide detective, Sir. That's what I was made for."

His eyes seem to soften with understanding a bit and he gives her a nod before tossing himself forward in his chair and sorting out the papers on his desk. "Well, Beckett..." he sighs, "your record speaks for itself. Youngest to ever make detective, pretty high closure rate, a bit of a rogue at times, it seems but..." he chuckles as he looks over her record, "the best cops always are."

She laughs, "Thank you, Sir."

He smiles with a silent chuckle as he continues to read her record. "All that being said," he says and slowly flips her file closed and folds his hands together on top of it, "I'm uh..."

Her throat tightens uncomfortably. "Is there a problem, Sir?"

"Well," he says and clicks on his mouse, "none of the precincts are really in need of another homicide detective."

She swallows past the ever-growing lump in her throat, "What-what about the 12th? Shouldn't they-"

"The 12th's homicide division is doing fine. Gates is reporting a strong case closure rate." He tells her, not looking at his monitor. And when she notices it, it's almost as if he had prepared it, as if he was ready with it. Like everything before was...

"Well," Beckett shakes her head, "there has to be something, Sir. I-I mean..." she chuckles despite herself, "I belong in the NYPD, Sir."

With that, the Commissioner's eyes lose all light and he looks away from her before letting out a long, heavy sigh. "Beckett," he says despairingly, "I'm afraid there's nothing I can do."

"What..." she struggles to start. There can't be more. "What do you mean?"

"Beckett, because of your..." the commissioner starts in a more regretful voice, "actions... in DC, whatever they may be, I'm afraid you've been blacklisted from law enforcement."

She feels her entire system fold in on herself. All she can do is stare at the man behind the desk with wide, lost eyes. It takes a long moment for her to shake her head and regain a few of her senses. "What... blacklisted, what does that mean?"

"It means the federal government has barred you from practicing law enforcement... on any level."

"Wha..." she tries again, still not wanting to believe anything that she's hearing. "But, Sir, they can't do that!" She starts to argue, quickly sitting up in her chair.

"They can... Beckett."

As the news starts to set it, her heart feels ripped from her chest. Her eyes feel cold, her tear ducts burning, but not letting any tears fall. Being a cop, having that badge... it was her whole life. She lived for that job. It was her purpose. She can never get it back. It feels as if she's feeling a part of her is being killed inside of her. She thought that at the very least, she would have the 12th and being a homicide detective to fall back on. That she'd at least have some higher calling to go after.

But... she has nothing. She's lost... everything in her life.

"I'm sorry, Beckett. I wish there was something I could do."

She lets his words of comfort go through her ears as she cranes her neck.

She pulls her arms into her stomach, suddenly feeling an intense chill rush over her. God, she needs his arms right now.

* * *

It's around noon that day when she wanders around, eventually making her way to her apartment building. Her phone died during her meeting with the commissioner. In the haste, she forgot to pack her power cord for her phone. She can do without it. It's probably a good deterrent to avoid going digging through painful memories she has stored away.

The shock has worn off, and now that she just feels lost, all she can do is go home. She's lost so much. And somehow... she can't find anyone to blame.

Eventually, she tiredly walks up to her apartment door, hearing some Irish punk rock come through the walls of her apartment. Sofie has company. On an almost frustrated sigh, Beckett knocks on the door and waits. She hears the music get turned down and the creak of the floorboards right where the coat closet is. After a moment, the door opens to the sight of her cousin Sofie in a pair of black boy shorts and a baggy grey long sleeve t-shirt. Her raven black hair is cut short to her jawline and held back with a bright red headband.

"Katie!" She smiles.

Beckett smiles a tired smile. "Hey, Sofe."

"Hey!" She sighs happily and steps through the door to hug her cousin. Beckett hugs her back softly. They had fun together as kids up in New Hampshire but Sofie never really stuck to one path. Beckett was always more focused. "It's good to see you. I wasn't expecting you back so soon." Sofie says, stepping back.

"Yeah, well..." she nods, "I wasn't either, really." She mutters. "Mind if I come in. We kinda need to talk."

"Oh, sure. Come on in." Sofie says, ushering her inside, kicking a pile of jackets out of the way. "Sorry about the mess. Scott and I had a bit of a get together last night."

Beckett hardens and feels her hopes be given up at the sound of that name. With her hands tucked into the pockets of her slacks, she feels her neck crane as Sofie closes the door behind her. "No problem." Sofie skirts around her and into the living room while Beckett slowly meanders into her old living room where she finds a tall, out of shape but not exactly overweight guy, his arms covered in tattoos, pulling a white t-shirt over his head, clad in a pair of baggy blue jeans that hang over his feet.

"Um, Scotty?" Sofie says, gaining the attention of her boyfriend. The man quickly turns around, his hair dishevled. "You remember my older cousin, Kate."

"Oh-oh..." he chuckles, "the lady cop, right?"

Beckett narrows her eyes. "Something like that." She quickly looks over to her cousin, eyeing her intently. "Sofie, can we talk?" She demands, nodding her head over to the kitchen. Marching into the kitchen with her hands tucked into her pockets, she turns to find Sofie giving her a flat browed glare. "Scott? Really?" She says quietly.

"What?" Sofie shrugs her shoulders. "He's a good guy, okay?"

"He also cheated on you and maxed out Aunt Leddy's credit card."

"He was just going through some stuff, Katie. He's a different guy now." Sofie defends him.

"Isn't that what you said about Jeffery? Need I remind you how I had to use my badge to get you out of that?"

"Scotty isn't like that. He's straightened out."

Beckett scoffs, pinches her forehead and closes her eyes. "Listen, that's not even why I'm here. Look," she says, looking at her cousin who just crossed her arms defensively, "things didn't work out in DC. I'm gonna need my apartment back."

"I'm sorry, Katie, but Scotty and I already have the next few month's rent paid up. I just hit my top out salary at my job and Scott asked me to marry him."

Beckett grits her teeth at her cousin's decision and gives her a deadpan stare.

"We're starting a life together here, Kate. I'm not gonna uproot all of this just because you lose your fancy FBI job."

"Oh, what," Beckett begins to fight back, "like the guy that cheated on you with the neighbor's dog walker is going to be the guy that stays loyal to his wife?"

Hearing that, Sofie smiles angrily and narrows her eyes. "Oh, you are _really _one to be going around giving relationship advice."

Beckett's throat closes, her nails digging into her palms. "What's that suppose to mean?" She says in a small, hesitant squeak of a voice.

"You had..." Sofie begins pointedly, "the _perfect _guy. Rich, romantic, gorgeous, and treated you like you brought the sun up in the morning, and what do you do?" Beckett's out of breath, having it all brought up to her with no warning and no hesitancy. "You leave him without even blowing him a kiss goodbye to be a _fed!" _

"_Shut _up!" She spits through gnashing teeth, anger seething. She can feel tears burning and stinging her eyes. "You don't know what the _hell _you're talking about!"

Sofie just sighs, pursing her lips at her cousin. "Look," she starts calmly, "you're family, so if you need a place to crash, you can stay here, but... Scott and I are happy and I don't want to hear anything about it if you stay here, okay?"

Beckett, feeling insulted, looks passed her cousin and into the living room, where she can see the open door to her bedroom, where her boyfriend is at the dresser digging through the top drawer.

She swallows and feels herself harden. She doesn't need this. After everything she's been through the past twenty-four hours, this is the last thing she needs. Getting fired from her job in DC, losing her place in the NYPD forever, it was crushing, but she walked away from it with her pride intact.

So without a word, Beckett slides passed her cousin and goes back out the door.

* * *

His time has gotten faster over the last few months, but he thinks he's peaked.

His legs carry him through the trail with ease and speed, his jogging sweats damp at the rims from running through the foliage of the thick woods. Five miles, every morning. But lately, he's been trying something different. As he nears the familiar bench that faces the lake, he deviates from the path and jogs through the woods, hopping over bushes, branches, and rocks until he reaches the stone boulder that protrudes out of the ground.

Getting back into shape was a bit of a feat at first, but it feels good. One of the big things that got him to feel better about himself, kept him from flying out of control after she left.

Once he reaches the boulder, he jumps on top, then quickly hops onto the thick branch that's within jumping distance from the ledge, then jumps from the branch and grabs onto branch overhead. With a grunt as the bark digs into his fingers, he flips his hands over and hooks his feet together, then begins to pull himself up.

"One..." he counts, "two... thrr... three..." he struggles. He can make it to ten. He started last week on a whim. "Four... five..."

Once his chin is up and over the branch, he lets himself down again and begins to pull himself up again. "Si-" he's stopped by the sound of the branch cracking, "oh, crap," he grits to himself halfway up just as the branch snaps and lets him fall to the floor of the woods, landing square on his back.

It knocks the wind out of him and he's left on the ground, a dull pain aching through his spine.

"Are you okay?" A woman's voice calls from a distance.

He chooses not to answer as he kicks his feet out to try and climb himself up. "Aghhh..." he groans.

Castle hears the woman's footsteps through the foliage come to a slow stop near him. "I saw you fall. Are you okay? Well-" she seems to stop herself, "of course, you're not, you wouldn't be on the ground. Here," she says.

Castle feels her grab onto his arm with one hand then wrap another arm around his chest, helping him to sit up as he continues to groan with his eyes wincing closed.

"How are you feeling?" She asks him, putting her hand on his triceps.

"Like I should have quit while I was ahead." He painfully mutters as his spine starts to throb. When he finally manages to open his eyes, he feels his heart flutter with a feeling he hasn't felt in what feels like years.

She's blonde, her hair short yet really naturally wavy without being curly. Her eyes are bright blue. An attractive slope in her jawline and lift in her cheekbones, and a bright, happy, smile. A healthy, slender figure wrapped in a pair of black leggings and a pink tank top.

"Are you sure?" She asks him. "Here, can you stand up?" She ushers him up.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." He tells her and slowly lifts himself up to his feet.

"Here, let me make sure." She says and quickly, without warning, or even permission puts her hands on the small of his back as she moves behind him. "Don't worry," she starts from behind him as he looks over his shoulder, "I'm a doctor. Well," she chuckles, "kind of."

"_Kind _of?!" He turns around.

"Well," she stays behind him, poking her thumbs into the small of his back at his spine, "for dead people mainly but... you're kinda the same except, you know... more moving parts."

Castle's brow pinches. "Thank you?"

"Nothing feels out of place. I assume you can still feel your legs considering you're standing and everything." She tells him and quickly jumps back in front of him. "Maybe just try to find a thicker branch next time?" She tells him with a bright-eyed smile and plants her hands on her hips.

"Yeah," he chuckles, "that way I can fall from an even thicker branch and humiliate myself in front of a doctor for dead people."

The woman's smile engulfs her features and she nods with him. "Just be sure not to end up as one of my patients. I'm not sure if I can handle the press asking me how I just happen to come across the mangled body of Richard Castle in the woods."

He stops, his heart fluttering momentarily. "You know who I am?"

"Oh," she starts bashfully, her cheeks turning beet red, "well, I uh... I'm kind of a fan of your work." Castle's smile softens. "Especially the Heat series. I just love you build both characters up instead of using the tearing down of one to build the other up, it... it's just a really good dynamic."

"That's uh..." he says with a nod of his head, a softness coming into his system, "that's actually a really nice compliment." He tells her, looking over to her. "One I don't get too often, actually."

"Well," she chuckles bashfully again, "I'm more complimentary than my sister. When she mentioned you'd bought the house across from her-"

"Oh," he stops her, "you're Cecilia's sister?" He points at her.

She smiles and gives him an eager nod. "I'm Sierra, the older one."

"It's nice to meet you then, Sierra." He says, extending his hand.

She looks down to his hand and draws in a long breath before shaking his hand softly. "Like-like wise, the pleasure is mine. I mean, I'm the fan meeting the author, after all."

"Well, it was pleasant for me too, so don't worry." He charms.

Sierra laughs and nods with him. "Well uh... since I know you're kinda new in town, would you... like to get some coffee? I could show you some local landmarks."

It's with that that the reality of the situation hits him. He can't say it blindsided him. She's really beautiful, after all, but... if he was the man he was a few years ago... "I'm uh..." he sighs hardly, "I actually just got out of a relationship... so..."

Sierra chuckles uncomfortably and looks away. "I was just asking to get some coffee."

Castle nods, "I know and if I was the man I was a few years ago, I would pretend like I didn't know where that would eventually end up and go along with it but... I'm sorry, I'm just not really ready."

Realizing she's being rejected, Sierra looks down to the ground. "Okay." She forces a smile up at him.

"No, really, because you're... you're really pretty and..." he chuckles, "you seem like a really fun person, but... I'm just not really ready."

"No, I," she trails off, waving her hand at him, "I totally understand. Don't worry."

Castle nods to her, honestly thankful. "Thank you."

She smiles at him. "See you around?"

"Hopefully not as a client." He lifts his brow at her.

With a bright laugh and an even brighter smile, she turns with a flick of her fingers and begins to jog away from him.

* * *

_A/N: Let me know what you think of this chapter. Next will be a more pivotal chapter. _


	4. Chapter 4

It's getting harder not to think about him. It was her worst fear of returning home. Having to throw herself back into a world of places they've questioned witnesses together, canvases they've run together, alleys they've stood in hovering over dead bodies. She was doing so well not letting her mind get trapped in the undertow of her memories, not letting herself get pulled into looking through old selfies they've taken that are still on her phone, reliving their times together.

She was doing well because she had no room for them while in DC.

But now... it's like the whole city is a towering, imposing memento of her failed, yet deepest relationship. As she walks tiredly toward a last ditch effort, she's even afraid of looking in the direction she knows the streets lead to the loft. Part of it is a fear she'll see him coming and run scared, but most of it is because she'll relive walking that street just like she did that night in the rain.

Beckett smiles all too sadly as she looks down at the pavement. He was so slow and caring with her. So painfully patient and loving and romantic, subverting all her expectations of what she thought he'd be like.

God, it's starting already.

Beckett takes in a quick whiff of the thick air and turns out of the foot traffic, going through the steel door entrance in a red brick building. She's out of ideas and just needs someone that will back her up, give her some kind of vote of encouragement, maybe some idea as of what to do next. She's lost everything in her life, in both lives, but her friends have always stood by her, especially Lanie. And it is a Saturday after all, maybe she can get Lanie to buy her lunch. Running on no income, she has to start dipping into her savings. It's enough to live on for a while, at least until she figures out what to do.

She keeps her smile almost cautious as she makes her way down the hallway of the morgue. She can't seem to settle her thoughts like the memories are the angry crowd at a football game whose team just lost. She wishes he was here. He always knew when she just needed that soft, gentle hand on the small of her back, letting her know that there was someone looking out for her. She can feel her throat tingle as the crowd in her mind starts their riot.

She pushes out a frustrated sigh and forcibly stops herself from thinking at all, putting a lockdown on her thoughts of them, and sees the swinging door to the morgue come into view. With a smile, she pushes open the door to the lab and is forced to a dead stop.

Sitting on the examining table is Lanie in a pair of blue scrubs while standing in between her legs is Esposito, moving his hands in circles around her sides as she drapes one arm over his shoulder and the other on his neck, slowly making out like teenagers. Surprised, Beckett raises her brow, smirking despite herself. When she hears Lanie moan and the clear sound of their lips parting, she decides she can't hear any more of it. "A_hem_," she clears her throat obtusely.

Esposito and Lanie both separate as they look over to her. Beckett smirks at them, feeling herself fit right back in where she was, catching two of her friends making out after they had supposedly broken up. Esposito just stares back at her over his shoulder with a hazy, puffy lipped look as Lanie squints to see if she's really seeing what she's seeing. "Beckett?" She asks.

Beckett feels a giggle rise up her throat. "Does this mean things _have _changed since I've been gone or that they haven't, hmm?" She grins at them and crosses her arms.

"Oh, Beckett!" Lanie squeals, pushing Espo out of the way by the shoulder and jumping off the table, jogging over to her. "Oh, girl, come here."

Beckett smiles and hugs her friend in a warm hug, feeling hopeful for the first time since losing everything. It's a reminder to her that there are some things she just can't seem to lose. Lanie seems to be one of them. She can always count on her staying the same. Beckett lets Lanie squeeze her tightly, shake her from side to side, and laugh in her ear. "Ooo, girl," she says and pushes her back by the arms, "you look great."

Beckett smiles a shy smile and brushes her fingers behind her ear. "Don't lie, Lane, I've been wearing the same clothes for over a day now."

The two fall into silence for a moment, Lanie still smiling happily up at her until Beckett looks up to see Esposito still standing near the table, watching the two with a stone-faced expression. Beckett pulls in a breath and sighs, "Hey, Espo." He was always sort of a brother to her.

But surprisingly, Espo just gives her a silent nod then moves his arm out to her to resemble a wave. "Hey," he says in a mumble. "Good to see you."

Beckett's caught off guard by his reaction but decides at the moment not to jump to any conclusions. "So, what's up?" She awkwardly tries to get the conversation going.

Esposito just stares at her, seeming unsure of how to answer without sounding uncivil. As his phone goes off in his pocket, he says "Nothing," plainly and looks away from her as he digs out his phone. The two go silent and Beckett can feel Lanie's eyes on her as she looks over to Esposito with a hurt, confused glare. "It's the Captain," he says, raising his phone in the air. "I've gotta go."

Lanie smiles as Espo makes his way through the lab, stopping at Lanie. "I'll pick up dinner tonight." He says with a smile toward her, glancing in Beckett's direction. "Nice catching up, Beckett."

With a cold, hopeless pang running through her already broken heart, she nods, "Yeah."

"Later, baby." Lanie says as Espo pushes out of the morgue. "So!" Lanie breaks Beckett out of her riptide of emotions with a bright, excited tone. "What are you doing back so soon?" She asks, rubbing her arm for a moment.

Beckett forces a smile and shrugs as she crosses her arms. "I'm not really sure yet, Lane."

"Well, how's the job in DC going?" She asks, unaware.

Beckett cracks her smile before letting it fade from her face, looking down to the linoleum. She has to commit to a lie. She was ordered not to tell anyone. "I resigned from the AG's office yesterday, Lanie."

Lanie's brow raises in surprise, "You did?" Beckett nods, giving her a small smile to make it seem believable. "That's not like you."

"Really? I mean," she chuckles a hollow chuckle, "I resigned from the NYPD before."

Lanie crosses her arms and leans off to the side, "Well, yeah, but you still came back, what..." she shifts her weight, "what made you quit?"

"Just..." she thinks up an answer, "they were more interested in keeping politicians happy than fighting for justice. They dealt in the grey when I'm built for the black and white and I just couldn't take it anymore." She eyes her, putting on a content, albeit tired smile. "So I quit."

Lanie smiles and reaches over to her. "So that mean you're coming back to the Twelfth?"

Her asking that made her smile become too heavy to keep. "Not exactly," she shakes her head. Before she can ask, seeing Lanie's falling expression, she comes out ahead of her, having to commit herself to another lie. "The commissioner told me that they couldn't reinstate me as a homicide detective unless someone resigns." She spitballs, hoping it will stick. "And no other precincts need a homicide detective."

"So," Lanie shakes her head, "what are you gonna do? Do you have any savings?"

"I have enough to keep me going, Lanie."

"So what, you're just gonna wait around in your apartment for something to happen?" Lanie shrugs.

"No," Beckett says, her tone getting heavy as she turns to pace through the lab and away from Lanie, putting a hand on the back of her waist as she pets her frizzy hair back. "I let my cousin Sofie move into my apartment after I left and she and her boyfriend are engaged and don't want to leave." She takes in a breath, forcing it not to shake once she realizes just how much of a wreck her life is. "And I wasn't about to stay there and watch my cousin ruin her life by marrying a guy that cheated on her and won't allow me to say anything."

"So where are you staying?" She asks, sounding honestly worried about her.

Beckett turns back around as she nears Lanie's desk. "I'll stay with my dad for now until I figure something else out." She says with no joy in her voice.

"Well," Lanie starts, shaking her head to herself, "did you want to get some lunch? I have time for a food truck."

"No thanks, I'm not hungry." She says, crossing her arms. It's not she's not hungry, more so just doesn't have the will to keep any food down.

"No, come on," Lanie tries again, "we'll go get some comfort food and I'll catch you up on all the gossip while you've been gone."

She knows there comes a point when she just needs to be alone, and right now, she just wants to be in at home and sit in front of the TV and shut her brain off. "I appreciate the offer, Lane, but uh..." she sighs, looking down to the floor, "I'm just not really up for it. Try again tomorrow?" She asks but doesn't wait for a response and turns toward the door.

Beckett raises her hand and presses against the side. "That's it?" Lanie asks suddenly, bringing her to a stop. "You're not even gonna ask about him?"

Her heart shakes in her throat, terrified, and she presses weakly against the door, seeming it takes all her strength just to get it to crack. "I've gotta go, Lane." She mutters, pushing the door open.

"For _eight _months, I defended you."

Beckett stops, frozen to her stop holding the door open while Lanie stands behind her near the examining table.

"For eight months, I've been telling them to give you the benefit of the doubt. I've been telling them 'you don't know what happened', 'there's two sides to the story', 'he's her partner', 'she'd never do that to him'. For eight months, I've been telling them to give you a break because we never heard your side. But you show up after this long, no phone call, nothing, and you don't even mention him?"

She finally feels a tear run down her face as she holds the door open.

Lanie scoffs, "Did you even care about him at all?"

"_I loved him!" _She breaks, stomping around toward Lanie with tears streaming down her face and her aching heart breaking inside of her chest, the dam finally giving way on everything she's held back. "I loved that man with _all _my heart!" She cries. "Leaving him tore a piece of my heart out, okay? Losing him was the worst thing that's happened to me since I lost my mom, so don't you _dare _say that I didn't care about him! I _loved _him!" She sobs.

Lanie remains mostly unphased by her outburst, simply keeping her arms crossed and her lips pursed. "Then tell me it isn't true that you left for DC without even saying goodbye to him."

"It wasn't like that." She continues to cry, her voice trembling.

"So you did?" Lanie nods, continuing to break her apart even further.

A breath gets choked out of her wracking body, her eyes flooded with hot tears. "Lanie, you don't understand..." she cries, her voice barely intelligable.

"Well then, why don't you help me? Because the Beckett I spent eight months defending would want to know how her partner's been since she left. She'd want to know how he's handling it and she'd want to know how to get him back. But you come here and you say all you're gonna do is just sit at home? I don't know what the hell happened to you, Beckett, but I'm starting to think that Javi was right. Maybe you don't deserve him."

At Lanie's harsh, unforgiving, unreserved words, she feels smaller and more broken than the night her mother was murdered.

Tears falling down her cheeks, her face raw with emotion, her lips trembling as she turns backward and falls against the wall, her eyes squeezing shut. She sobs as silently as she can and puts her hands to her face, slowly sliding herself down to the floor, her lungs straining to choke back her sobs. She slides down to the floor and pulls her legs up to her chest, hiding herself in the cove of her lap.

She's lost her job, she's lost her career, she's lost her badge, she's lost her home, she's lost her friends.

But that's not what's killing her. None of those things could repair her after what's happened. What's killing her is she lost the man she loves.

Beckett rests her head down on her knees and wraps her arms around her legs, taking in a loud breath to make her sobbing audible throughout the entire lab. She's never felt more broken in her life. It takes her a moment to tightly squeeze her eyes and raise her head up out of her legs and look up at Lanie, who's looking down at her with much more of an understanding gaze.

"Maybe Javi's right, Lane." She strains. "Maybe I don't deserve him." She admits, her voice tight and emotions still boiling over. "But if that's suppose to mean I have to stop being in love with him, it's not going to work."

Lanie sighs softly, giving Beckett a small nod to show her understanding as Beckett starts to gather her emotions from her place on the floor. Beckett turns back into the cove of her legs and squeezes her eyes shut to try and stop the tears as she hears Lanie come to sit on the floor next to her. "What really happened, Kate?"

Beckett lifts her head again and sniffles in a long breath, resting her mouth on her forearm for a moment. "After the case with Vaughn, Castle and I's relationship started to get rough." She begins in a low, monotone voice, drained of emotion. "We started getting distant. I didn't know if he wanted a future and I couldn't get him to talk about it. So before I knew what was happening, I was offered the job in DC for the AG's office and at first..." she feels another tear leak out, "I really wanted it. I thought it was my big chance to make a real difference. But I decided not to tell him."

"Why not?" Lanie pushes her.

Beckett chuckles darkly and looks down to the floor, still holding her legs to her chest. "I wanted the job more than what my relationship with him was giving me."

She hears Lanie sigh loudly and sees her turn her head away from her out of the corner of her eye, but ignores it. There's not much more anyone can do to make her feel any smaller. "What happened after?"

"After I got back from the interview, I was making us dinner at my place when he found my boarding pass to DC and asked me about it. I had to tell him about the interview and when I did..." she feels another pool of cold tears well up in her eyes, "he got really angry for me not telling him and hiding it from him and he walked out. I tried to get him to talk to me but he said he needed to be alone."

Lanie seems to give her a moment before asking again. "So why'd you leave without saying goodbye?"

Her heart quakes violently inside of her throat as her tears burn. "After I got offered the job, he called and left a voicemail saying that he needed to talk and he needed to talk in person." She says, hearing is angry, dark, unforgiving tone still in her ears. "Lanie, I never heard him sound so angry and dark than I did in that voicemail and I just knew that he..."

When she doesn't continue, Lanie has to press her again. "That he what?"

Beckett sniffles a heavily emotionally congested breath, "That he was breaking up with me." She turns to her with tearful eyes again. "And I just couldn't face that. I couldn't face getting my heart broken so I ran." She admits, feeling small and worthless as she turns back into the cove of her legs.

"And now you're back from DC and you've done what... everything but even mention him?" Lanie points out, seeming to never want to give her a break.

"Lanie..." She sighs emotionally, lifting her head back until she's leaning against the cold metal of the cooler, "don't you think I've wanted to _straight _to his loft and throw my arms around him again and beg him to give us another shot since the moment I left?" She asks her incredulously. "I still love him, Lanie, but he was breaking up with me."

"Well," Lanie starts again, "if you do plan on going to the loft, you'll be out of luck finding him there." She tells her and stands up, quickly making her way around the slab.

That gets her attention. Enough to get her up off the floor and follow her. "What do you mean?"

Lanie turns around, placing one hand on her hip and the other on the table next to her. "After you left, Esposito and Ryan decided they'd try to get a round on the house as Castle's bar and when they got there, the bartender told them that he was already there and he was down in his office. That's when they found him already well into his own private reserve."

Just like that, all of her emotions are already welling right back up, breaking her down even further. Hearing him drinking himself into oblivion... all because of her own cowardice in not wanting to face him.

"Javi got all he could out of him, telling him that he'd asked you to meet him in person so he could explain everything, but you never showed and how he went to your apartment and used the spare key that you showed him you had hidden away and you'd already packed up."

"Lanie, believe me, I-" She starts to emotionally explain.

But Lanie cuts her off, closing her eyes and waving her hand in front of her. "About a month later, Ryan, at the request of Jenny, went over to the loft to check on him since he hadn't been around since you left. That's where Martha told him that Castle had decided to take an extended vacation for the summer with Alexis."

"Extended, wha..." she thinks, trying to wrap her brain around it. "He left New York?" She asks emotionally. God, please don't let it be true that she drove him out of his home all because she just couldn't face him in person.

But when Lanie gives her a slow, single nod, Beckett's emotions start to boil back up and she has to lean against the table next to her to keep from falling again. "You gonna ask where or do I have to keep prodding to get you to ask?" Hearing that, Beckett looks back up to her and feels her eyes harden. Lanie blinks at her slowly. "I got an email from Alexis a few days ago about her declaring her major as pre-med at OSU."

Beckett's brow pinches, curiosity the only emotion that can clear everything else out. "OSU?"

Lanie breathes slowly, "She told me that her and Castle are happy and that she decided to move out there with him when he told her that he'd bought the lake house they were vacationing in."

"Lanie..." Beckett harshly pleads.

Lanie sighs and turns away from her, "It'd be useless hiding it from you. It's in the tabloids already." She tells her as she moves away from her to the other side of the lab before turning back to face her. "It's a small, suburban town in Oregon called Crestfield."

Her breath gets sucked out of her. "Oregon?" She struggles.

"Mmhmm." Lanie hums with pursed lips. "I figured that would tell you all you need to know about how he feels about all of this."

She drove the man she loves clear to the other side of the country.

To think she walked in here thinking there's no possible way she could lose any more.

* * *

_A/N: I hope I got the tone for this chapter right. Grammarly decided to put an emoji in the corner and it keeps judging me. Let me know. :)_


	5. Chapter 5

The music is only to help him set a tempo for his in-house workout. It's here, in one of the spare rooms downstairs off the kitchen, that he usually pushes himself the hardest, and this afternoon is no different. In a tank top that's drenched in sweat after a grueling, yet short feeling session of intense weight lifting, he's now on the floor, hammering out sit-ups as fast as he can, lifting a thirty-pound weight with him behind his head.

He manages to get to twenty before he crashes, panting. "Ahh..." he almost sighs, the taste of salt running over his lips as the sweat stains his late day scruff.

He likes it because he can't think while he's working out. That's what it started as, him working out again. Just a way to keep everything else in his head quiet. Then it started as a backward way into vanity, showing that he doesn't need her to look good or draw looks, that he doesn't need her to make himself feel young and healthy. Mean-spirited, perhaps, but it kept him at it in the early days.

Now, it's part of the new leaf he's turned over. It's just part of his routine now. Something he does as normally as brushing his teeth before and after bed.

After a few more heavy breaths, he rolls himself over onto his stomach, grabbing the dumbbell and lifting his knees off the ground. He lets out a tight breath and starts to lift the weight straight up off the ground, feeling his muscles break apart with a burn in his triceps. After fifteen reps, he stops only for a moment before grabbing the other weight that lay next to him and working the other arm.

_Seven... eight... _he thinks when he hears Alexis knock on the door. He has to keep the door closed or else Sasha would take him on the floor as an invitation to demand him pet her, no matter if he's in the middle of something or not. "Come in! Nine..." he says.

The door opens and he can hear Sasha's tags jangle behind his daughter. "Hey, Dad."

"Hey, pumpkin," he strains as he lifts the weight up in his eleventh rep.

Sasha whimpers as she pushes between the door jam and Alexis' legs and jogs over to him, rubbing her wet nose around his ear and down his jaw. Castle starts to laugh as the dog tickles him. "Sasha," he chuckles as he lifts the weight up for his... "you're making me lose count." He laughs as Sasha takes the sound of his voice as an invitation.

Overcome with laughter as Sasha pushes herself underneath him and under his arm, Castle gives up and rolls over onto his back, using his pulsating and heavy arms to take his dog up and roll her on top of his chest.

"This is why I don't let you in here!" He faux-lectures as he scratches Sasha's ribcage.

"Here, Dad," Alexis says after watching the two of them for a moment, "I figured you'd want this." She says as he moves to sit up right against the wall opposite of the entrance into the room.

Castle smiles, still catching his breath, and nods, taking the cold bottle of water from his daughter. "Thank you, sweetie." He says as Sasha stands next to him at eye level as he sits on the floor, poking him with her nose to keep him petting her. After twisting open the bottle of water, he lethargically lifts his hand and puts it in the thick fur behind Sasha's ear. "You're home kinda early, aren't you?"

Alexis shrugs and sits down across from him on the weight bench. "My afternoon class got canceled."

"Well, that's good." He says, finally able to catch his breath and down a long drink of water as his dog curls up next to him in a large ball.

"I heard about what happened this morning." She says, her voice small and cautious.

"What happened this morning?" He asks her as he plays with Sasha's ears, drawing a blank as to what she's talking about.

Alexis shakes her head, as if he's missing the obvious. "Cecilia's sister asking you out on a date?"

Realizing what she's talking about, and also that it had completely skipped his mind, he gives her a long nod as he cranes his neck backward. "Oh... that..." he says, taking another quick drink of water. "I forgot about that." He thinks out loud. "Wait-" he stops, smiling honestly at the situation, "how'd you hear about that?"

"She was checking her mail when I pulled up and we got to talking." Alexis innocently shrugs her shoulders.

"Ah," he smiles, "you live in the loft your entire life and I bet you can't even tell me the name of the neighbors across the hall." Alexis smirks defensively. "Yet, when it comes to my personal business, you'll talk to the neighbors here all day, right?" He plays along, not at all mad at his daughter as he lifts the almost empty bottle of water to his mouth again.

"She's the one that brought it up, Dad." She says, crossing her arms as she leans back against the wall and kicks her legs out longways. "She said that you ran into her sister while you were jogging this morning and she asked you out."

"She asked me to get a cup of coffee with her, Alexis. I'd hardly consider that a date." He defends himself.

"Is that why you shot her down?"

"I-I..." he struggles for a quick answer. "Alexis, she's just not really my type, okay?"

"Dad," she grins, half-hearted yet knowingly, "I was shown pictures of her."

"Yeah, and?" He shrugs.

"She's really pretty, that's all I'm saying."

"Okay," Castle almost chuckles and waves the bottle of water at her to get her to slow down, "why is it so important to you all of the sudden that I say yes to this woman?"

"It's just that you haven't gotten out much since we moved out here." Alexis shrugs again.

"Alexis," he starts with a lift in his brow and a smirk, "if I wanted a redhead to butt into my personal life, I would have gotten your grandmother to move out here with us."

"Dad," Alexis chuckles, shaking her head. And as Castle downs the rest of the water in one long chug, he can sense Alexis has something to say and is only taking her time to muster up the courage to say it. "Dad, do you still have feelings for her?"

The question makes him stop, the light hearted feeling he usually has, sitting in his home gym with his loving oversized lapdog sleeping next to him and his loving daughter talking to him, vanishes, replaced with a venomous snake serpentining around his heart. "Lex..." he sighs.

"I mean, it's been almost nine months, Dad."

"I know that, sweetheart." He says in a soothing voice, more for her than him.

"I'm not saying you have to go chasing after Cecilia's sister or anything, but it might have been a good way to just test the waters. So..." she rushes, looking over to him with an honest twinge of worry in her eyes. "I guess I'm just wondering if a part of you is still waiting for her to come around."

"Well," he smiles softly, "I can put that worry to rest now because I'm not." He says easily. "Look, Alexis," he starts as he stands up, waiting for her to stand up in front of her. "Do I still have feelings? Yes, of course, I still have feelings." He shrugs casually.

Alexis nods, almost sadly in front of him.

"But the feelings I have," he says reassuringly as he reaches up to take hold of her arms caringly, "are for the woman I met in New York. I fell in love with a woman I was partners with in the NYPD. And as far as I'm concerned, that woman doesn't exist anymore. She might as be a..." he shakes his head, trying to think of a term, "a figment of my imagination. I might as well have fallen in love with Nikki Heat, okay?"

"But Dad," Alexis fights, still worried, "that's not saying that those feelings you have aren't real."

"No, it's not." He agrees. "But I promise, I'll find someone else when I'm ready. And if anything, I think you'd take it as a _good _sign that I'm not jumping right back into it."

Alexis pauses, looking away from him before she nods with an emotional smile up at him.

"But just so you know, my being ready may take a while. That's why I shot Sierra down. Because you know, probably better than anyone else... that I lost more than just a girlfriend when she left."

"Yeah, I know, Dad." She agrees knowingly.

Castle nods with a soft smile. "You're really happy out here?" He asks, changing the subject.

Alexis smiles brightly and nods. "Yeah, I am."

Castle smiles and rubs his daughter's arms lovingly. "Good, now you might want to get out of here before I hug you when I'm all sweaty."

Alexis chuckles and rolls her eyes. "Love you, Dad."

"You too, pumpkin." He says with a loving smile as he watches her turn out of the door and down the hall into the kitchen.

On a hard sigh, letting the smile fall, he feels himself harden again.

That's why he hates talking about her. It takes so damn long getting that lighthearted, blissful feeling he had when she came in with Sasha back. Just a couple seconds and he's right back to where he was after she left, drinking himself into as much of a coma as he can, hating the world for ever existing and giving him that kind of misery. After a moment, his eyes cautiously flick over to where he has his things from his pockets piled up. He knows he'll hate himself for it, but there's no stopping it now. He quickly moves to the window and moves his phone off his wallet and flips it open, digging into the side pocket with his fingers.

When he feels the soft, thick cloth, he holds his breath and tugs it out of the folds of the pocket. He swallows thickly and takes the small piece of thick, protective fabric in his palm and feels his throat quiver painfully and emotionally as he pulls the ring out of its thick, cloth casing.

He had it all imagined in his head. Down to her reaction.

Stuffing the ring back into the casing, he tosses the ring back down into the crease of his wallet and moves out of the room.

* * *

She only has the courage to gaze at the latest picture of them she has on her phone.

One of them at his birthday party. She knows there are so many other pictures of them somewhere, taken by friends. Some of just the two of them, of just him, just her, amazingly since they were almost inseparable the entire night. Some are probably of them with their friends. But this one, the one she's staring at now, is all she has the emotional strength to bare looking at. She can't fathom what kind of torment she'd put herself through swiping any further.

Just a simple selfie, one of countless others that are on this phone, she took of her wrapped into his side, her eyes closed as she moves to kiss him on the cheek but missed and him pressing his forehead down onto her temple in loving reverence of everything she did for him, a happy smile splitting his face as he gently presses his fingers to her jawline to bring her in for a kiss. She loves this one because it was just so mistimed in what she was trying to capture, but ended up capturing something so much more telling.

She can tell, looking at this picture now that what she caught is what it's like between them when they let the world fall away. It's what they searched each other for.

With cold tears still running down her face, she smiles as the thought rounds the bases again and comes at her, making her chuckle sadly as she pets the screen of her phone with the pad of her thumb, right where his cheek is.

Her flight leaves late tomorrow night. It gives her plenty of time to go by the storage unit and pack what she missed after her stuff gets delivered. Until then, she sits, curled up on the couch she grew up watching cartoons on in a pair of sweats that she dug haphazardly out of her suitcase. She doesn't have the energy to get up and cook something, and her dad's phone is going straight to voicemail. She would just breakdown and order in, but she can't really waste the money when she knows that there's plenty of food just a distance of ten feet away in the kitchen.

Luckily, she hears a key being jangled in the lock. She takes one last look at the picture and hits the home button before locking her phone and standing up. The door opens to a confused looking Jim Beckett, wondering who's in his apartment. It takes him just a second to see his daughter standing in the middle of the living room waiting for him to see her and when he does, he drops his travel shoulder bag to the floor next to the door and extends his arms.

"Katie!" He says, surprised.

Beckett smiles and doesn't waste time in stepping up and hugging him, aching for some genuine love and support. Wrapping her arms around her father, she smiles and feels like a shield is brought over her when he puts his arms around her. "Hey, Dad."

Jim is silent and simply hugs his daughter for a long minute before rubbing her back tenderly and stepping back. "I wasn't expecting you here. What's going on?"

Beckett smiles, knowing she has to lie again. "With Sofie in my apartment, I thought I'd stay here for a night or two, if that's okay."

"Of course, sweetie, you know this is still your home." Jim says, rubbing her arms lovingly. "But what's up? Did something happen with your job with the AG's office?"

Beckett chuckles, and shakes her head. "Uh..." she tries, "think you can get some food in my stomach before I explain? I'm starving."

Jim complies immediately, "Of course, come on."

After an easy-going forty-five minutes, the lasagna is in the oven and Jim is refilling two mugs of black coffee on the counter as she sits in a chair at the dining table just outside of the kitchen. "Thanks for making dinner, Dad. I'm not sure I could have managed it."

"You look pretty tired, Katie." He points out as he sets the mug down in front of her. "Is everything going okay in DC?"

Beckett sniffles and pulls her legs up to her chest, resting her shins against the edge of the table. "I quit the AG's office yesterday, Dad." She says, taking a small sip of the bitter coffee.

Jim simply stars at her, leaning forward and watching her with his mug clasped in his hands. "You did?" He attempts.

"Mmhmm," Beckett smiles and sets her mug back down to the table. "They weren't really interested in the kind of justice that I'm built for, so... I took it upon myself to resign."

Jim takes her answer for a moment and nods, letting her sink down into him accepting it. "Katie," he says after a moment, gaining her eyes, "you forget that I was married to your mother?"

Her smiles gets heavy at the edges and her eyes lose the sense of security in that instant.

"I know you, Katie." Jim says with a stern look. "Even if they weren't doing what's right, you wouldn't have just walked away." All she can do is look at him, knowing there's nothing she can do. "You would have done what's right and taken whatever punishment they threw at you, but you wouldn't have just quit."

Her throat is quaking with her spine and she can feel another wave of cold tears run down her face as she looks down to her knees. "I screwed up, Dad."

Jim blinks at her, "Well, what happened?"

She shakes her head. "I can't tell you, Dad." When he sends her a pinched brow, she lifts her hand. "No, Dad, I can't tell you because it's classified. All I can tell you is that..." she sighs a shaky sigh and tucks her hands back into the fold of her legs, "is that I'm very lucky to even have this chance at... losing everything." She finishes in a low tone, hanging her head.

Jim seems to nod, used to her hiding things because of her job, and doesn't push any further on the subject. "What do you mean, sweetie, lost everything?"

Beckett sniffs in a congested breath. "Because of what happened, I've been barred from law enforcement."

Jim pauses for a moment before asking, "So does that mean you can't go back to the NYPD?"

She's nodding before he can finish. "I can't act in law enforcement in any capacity..." she clarifies, looking at him with emotion vibrating in her eyes, "at all."

"Well," he thinks, shrugging his shoulders," have you thought about doing PI work? Private security maybe?"

"Dad," she rolls her eyes, "I didn't graduate an All-star from the Academy to work as a mall cop and follow around cheating husbands."

"So-" Jim starts, but shakes his head and stops himself for a moment. "So, what are you planning on doing then?"

"Well, my flight leaves tomorrow night, so I was hoping you'd give me a ride." She says with a sad smile.

"Your flight? Your flight where, Kate?"

Her sadness draining, she looks back up to her father. "Eugene airport."

Jim's brow remains straightened with confusion. "Eugene, where's that?"

"It's in Oregon." She says to him, deciding to explain before she has to wait for him to ask it all out of her. "I'm flying out there for Castle."

When she says that name, a part of him feels less worried about her, but another part of him just gets more worried. "Rick moved out of Manhattan?"

It's then that she just decides to say it. "I don't have anything else left, Dad." She shrugs her shoulders meagerly. "I know that he was going to break up with me before I left, but... I can't let myself just assume that I can't get him back." She looks over to her dad, who's still looking at her with somewhat of a wondering gaze. "Everything else I can live with losing."

Jim nods to himself. "But not Rick?"

Kate shakes her head as a smile appears on her face. "No."

* * *

_A/N: Now, I have actually lived in Eugene as a kid. Miss it like crazy. Really nice out there._

_Last of the 'set-up' chapters. Next one will get into the actual premise. What'd you think? :)_


	6. Chapter 6

"Are you sure you'll be alright, Katie?" Her father finally asks as he rides the brake through the thick traffic. "I know I say this a lot, but I'm worried about you."

"Why, Dad?" She asks on a chuckle. "I'm not a cop anymore."

He nods, "Yes, which means you don't have any income." He tells her as the traffic comes to a halt.

"I have enough in savings, Dad." She defends.

Jim sighs as he inches forward in the traffic. "Just promise me you'll call me if you need help?" He tells her with an upward inflection.

"Dad," She starts with a worried tone of her own, "I'm not going to tear you away from your job just because I'm lonely."

"Katie," Jim chuckles again, seeming to shake off her concern, "I may have a law degree, but I'm mostly a paper pusher these days. One of the partners told me I should take early retirement and enjoy life while I can."

"You'd retire this early?" She asks him with a surprised, taken aback, smile. For a moment, she's happy conversing with her dad about menial things. "What would you do?"

Jim shrugs as he turns down onto a less crowded, one-way street. "Well, your mother and I always talked about moving out of the city, buying a little place upstate somewhere in the suburbs. Your mother always wanted to open up some sort of shop."

Kate laughs to herself at the idea and looks out the passenger window. "We're here." She tells him as he double-parks outside of a brick building with a glass door. "I'll just be a minute." She says quickly as she climbs out of the car and goes inside.

After showing the clerk the proper paperwork, she's handed a key and is pointed in the direction of her storage unit. Near the end of the first floor, she arrives at the sliding yellow door that marks her unit. She opens the unit and quickly takes survey of her things, seeing most of it intact, and luckily, most of the things she needs are right in front, mostly the drawers taken out of her dresser.

Save for one.

When she sees it, her throat closes. She's never opened up that drawer. She doesn't even know if he ever kept anything in it. She's sure that he has an article of clothing or two left behind in his laundry after a night of unwinding at his loft. But it was his drawer. Maybe a simple cotton t-shirt he wore underneath a flannel, a scorecard from Twister maybe. Ignoring everything else she needs to pick up for her trip, she moves toward the drawer with shaky legs and a cold sweat rushing over her skin, making even her scalp tighten with nervousness.

She slowly tugs on the knob and feels her eyes burn.

Sitting inside is just a single piece of clothing, a grey flannel with darker colored stripes he wore when he dressed casually. She doesn't hesitate in reaching in and snatching the shirt up in between her fingers, just to feel the fabric. When she caresses the soft fabric of his shirt, she feels a part of her relax, petting the shirt with her thumb. After a moment, she lets her eyes drift shut and pulls the shirt out, leaning back to sit against the arm of her couch that sits against the side of the storage unit.

Holding his shirt tenderly in her hands, she flattens it out on her palms and gazes in reverence at it, a sad, emotional smile appearing on her face. She misses him so much.

* * *

As Castle sits in the passenger seat, he looks between his daughter's feet and her intense stare at the dashboard.

"Okay, sweetie, one more time." He encourages her. "You'll get it, I promise."

Alexis takes in a long breath and blows it out in cold air, wringing both hands on the steering wheel. "Okay..." she sighs nervously.

The engine purrs softly as Alexis moves one hand down to the shifter. He watches carefully as her left leg starts to pull up off the floor, then looks quickly up to her. He has confidence in her, but knowing how quickly his little girl tackled things in the past, he's surprised she hasn't gotten it down yet. As the engine revs down when she eases up on the clutch, he decides to stay silent, thinking that shouting orders at her won't help. But as the car jerks forward and Alexis guns the gas, the car rocks to a dead halt, the engine cutting off.

"_Ah!" _Alexis shouts and slams her palm down onto the Ferrari's steering wheel.

"No," Castle starts with a smile quickly getting the better of him, "it's okay, pumpkin. You'll get it. Don't worry."

"No, I _won't, _Dad!" She cries angrily. "This is _stupid! _Why can't they just make things work like they're supposed to!"

"Hey, calm down, sweetie. You'll get it." He says to her reassuringly. "You said you wanted to learn how to drive the Ferrari. Well, I'm teaching you. And besides, this car is a family heirloom, you're going to inherit this thing someday. You're going to want to know how to drive it, aren't you?"

"Family heirloom?" She cracks, rolling her eyes as she looks over to him, an honest emotional frustration shining in her eyes. "Dad, it's a sports car."

"We don't have much history in this family, okay?" He laughs. "Unless you had your heart set on inheriting your grandmother's wardrobe?" He lifts his brow to her. Alexis' shoulders slump heavily and she looks over to him, her hands falling into her lap. "Let's try one more time, okay? Now, foot down on the clutch." He tells her and waits for her to press down on the third pedal. "Okay, start it up."

The Ferrari's engine roars and Alexis slowly puts her hands back up on the wheel, looking frightened and nervous.

"Okay," Castle says reassuringly, "now remember, as you slowly let up off the clutch, slowly ease onto the gas as you feel the car pull."

She breathes out another shaky breath and wrings her hands on the steering wheel nervously. She takes a long moment of pause before looking out onto the mostly empty parking lot of the grocery store. Castle watches intently as she slowly lets up off the clutch, easing her foot off the ground. But just as before, when she engine starts to give out, Alexis panics and guns the engine to try and save herself, stalling out for the tenth time.

"_Aaahhhh!" _She seethes as the car rocks to a stop.

"Calm..." Castle tries over his laughter, "calm down, sweetie." He laughs.

"Why are you laughing?!" Alexis whines. "This isn't funny, Dad! Why are you laughing at me?!"

"I'm not laughing at you, Alexis. I promise." He puts his hand up. "It's just that you were always so good at everything growing up, I never got to really have this kind of moment with you. It's not you, I swear."

"Well, this _isn't _funny!" She whines, seeming honestly distraught at her inability to get this right. "I'm not feeling it pull, okay? What pull am I supposed to be feeling? Do you want me to get out and hook a horse up to the front fender or something? I don't feel any pull!"

"Okay, okay," Castle calms himself down. "It's okay, Alexis. I had the racing clutch taken out because I don't hate you. So here's what I want you to try. Start it up again." He says and gives her a moment to start to Ferrari up again. "Okay, now... ease down on the gas just a little bit." He says. Alexis slowly presses down on the gas, enough to get the RPMs up just a tad, "Okay, good!" He encourages, "now, slowly let off the clutch."

She lets out a shaky breath and slowly eases off the clutch and the car begins to move smoothly. "Ha..." she laughs in a sigh of relief as the car finally begins to move.

"See? I told you you'd get it!" He says with a smile.

After a few more times repeating the same process, Alexis quickly gets the hang of taking off and is soon easing into the gas like she copied the information into her brain straight out of a textbook. Once she regains her confidence, Alexis is confidently making circles in the parking lot of the grocery store.

"Okay, think you can handle driving home while I pick up stuff for dinner tonight?" He asks her when she pulls to a stop.

"Yeah, I think I can handle it." She tells him with a smile. "But Dad, it's almost five miles home. You sure you want to walk?"

"Yeah, why not?" He tells her with a smile and climbs out of the Ferrari, closing the door and giving her a wave and a smile as she pulls off and out of the driveway.

* * *

This is where she drove him to?

She can tell why he decided to retreat here. The town is almost picturesque of small-town America. The houses are all well kept with furnished patios and groomed lawns and tended gardens. People are walking their dogs down the sidewalk with smiles on their faces, even waving at her, a complete stranger, as she drives by them. The weather is nice and temperate, especially for early March. It's a bit windy outside, but it's nowhere near as cold and wet as New York was.

She never considered herself one to live out in the suburbs like this, but maybe she could understand how a place like this would grow on a person. It's late afternoon and the place smells of husbands getting home from work and hoisting their kids up in their arms and asking about their day at school.

But she's here to find Castle. As small as this town my seem, it's still relatively large. She knows he lives by a lake, but has no clue as to where that lake would be, or which house would even be his.

After driving through the streets of the quaint suburban town of Crestfield, passing by single-story homes on a temperate spring day with the sun shining, she can't help but feel a twinge of hopelessness. How's she ever going to find him.

But serendipity seems to grace her when she looks down the street to see a very familiar cherry red Ferrari come down the opposite side of the road. "Castle?" She asks, a hopeful lift in her tightly wound voice.

As the Ferrari passes her, she notices it's Alexis in the driver seat alone, looking overly concentrated on driving. Beckett looks over her shoulder to follow the car. Since when does Alexis know how to drive stick?

She looks down the road to see a town center of sorts come into view ahead of her and on the left of her, a medium-sized parking lot that only has upwards of ten to fifteen cars parked in it in front of a grocery store. Maybe if she's lucky, she can ask around inside and find out where Alexis was heading. She can't bank on Alexis not spotting her and leading her away from their house. It's probably just paranoia, still thinking like she was trained to working for the AG's office, maybe.

She pulls her rental car to a stop at the far end of the parking lot, whipping off her seatbelt and climbing out on nervous legs. With a breath out to test the air, she brushes her hair behind her ear as it whips with the breeze and closes the car door. When she rounds the front of the car, she starts to stride quickly toward the entrance and makes it a few long strides before looking up.

And when she does, she spots him.

_Oh my god..._ she thinks to herself.

She's stopped dead when she sees him a distance of ten feet away from her, seeming to have spotted her the same time she spotted him and stopped.

_He looks... _she tries to think as her heart flutters almost painfully inside of her chest and her mouth turns to a desert. He looks incredible. With a reusable grocery bag hanging from one hand, in a tan flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms, he has on a black t-shirt underneath it and a pair of dark blue jeans with a pair of sunglasses over his eyes. His hair seems lighter and less gelled and styled, but works so well for him. He looks so much thinner, leaner, healthier, more toned and defined. With the wind flowing against him as he stands dead still a distance away from her, she can see the clear definition of his lean muscles underneath the thin fabric of the black t-shirt.

But for all of this admiration of his well-toned physique, it quickly comes at an almost crippling, gut wrenching price when a thought occurs to her.

Was she bad for him?

"Ha..." she tries on an almost inaudible voice. "Hi..." She says with an open, almost shy smile.

She watches as he slowly starts to approach her, and it isn't until now that she sees the pinch in his brow and the clench in the more defined line of his jaw. Not even a hint of a smile. He looks just as furious as he sounded on that voicemail.

But nonetheless, she can't help but sigh quickly and smile again, waving her hand out to him slightly. "You look great." She tries as he continues to slowly pace toward her.

He gets another step toward her before he simply looks off in another direction toward the corner of the parking lot that leads out to an open field behind the houses and starts to walk off as if she wasn't even there.

"Wait, Castle," she tries, stepping out to try and intercept him. But he stays stone silent as he marches away from her. "Castle, just hear me out, please." She pleads with him as she walks behind him for a few steps.

"Hear you out?" He parrots back at her and stops to turn around. "I'm not even gonna bother telling you to give me a good reason why I should." He spits at her and turns back around and continues to walk off.

"Castle, please!" She practically begs. "I came all this way just to find you. The least you can do is give me a few seconds."

Castle slows his stride and hands his head for a moment. After a pause, he drops the bag to the pavement and turns back around, moving his sunglasses to his head as he looks up at her with a set of stern, almost vacant eyes.

They're just as blue as she remembers them.

"I uh..." she attempts and has to look away from him. "I quit the AG's office."

She doesn't know why she thought in her head that that would be enough to get him to crack, because he doesn't even flinch.

"They weren't really interested in fighting for justice the way I saw it, so... I quit a couple of days ago." She nods, still afraid that he'll think of her as weak and frail for giving up. "And," she chuckles darkly to herself, "the NYPD's going through a bit of a budgetary freeze right now and I can't get my job as a detective back unless someone decides to retire or quits, so... here I am." She shrugs.

It only takes a moment for him to give her a stern nod, look away from her toward the store, and turn back away from her and start to march out of the parking lot again.

"Wait, Castle," she tries again, almost floored at his reaction. "I just told you that I quit my job for you."

He stops dead, but only to spin back around with fire shooting from his eyes. "You didn't quit _anything _for me!" He spits, pointing at the ground. "You quit your job for you." He points his finger at her. "Don't try that on my, Beckett." He says in a low, dark tone, almost as if it's a warning and turns back around.

"Castle, I'm here for _you. _Doesn't that count for anything?" She fires back, throwing her arms out.

"No!" He returns, spinning around to continue the fight. For him, he's had this interaction a thousand times in his head, has the scene and the dialogue written and well-versed and has had it stowed away for months. "And you want to know why?" He asks her, narrowing his eyes. "You didn't quit because you missed me, or because it was just too painful for you to be away from me. No, you quit the job you left me for because it wasn't what you thought it was. And not only that," he angrily shakes his head, tossing his arms out as he shouts, "you tell me that you tried to get your old job with the Twelfth back and they wouldn't give it to you and now you're here? What the hell am I to you, Beckett? Your last resort?"

Her eyes burning, she shakes her head. "No, that's-"

"No," he smiles evilly, almost satisfied with tearing her down even further. "No, of course, I am. Because that's the way it's always been, so I guess it's nice to see that nothing's changed with you. I've always been your last option, haven't I? I'm the guy you go to when you've exhausted all your other options because you know that I'll just throw my arms open to you no matter what you put me through, right?"

"No, Castle, that's not-" She tries on a trembling voice.

"Well, I'm going to take a lesson from you," he continues on without her, "and I'm going to leave _you _grasping for what I leave behind."

As he turns away from her, quicker than he had before and starts to march away from her, she tries one last time. "But, Castle, I _love _you!"

Not shaken in the least, he just stops again and turns around, pointing at the ground again with fire in his eyes. "If that were true, you wouldn't have left." He tells her in a dark voice, staring right through her. "Because I felt the same way about you and I _never _would have left you. So don't try and tell me that after this long."

When he turns back around, her heart lodged in her throat, she finally gets her voice back. "Give me a break here, Castle!" She calls, which doesn't get him to turn around. "I mean, you were going to break up with me anyway!"

That makes him stop dead, stopping mid-stride as he moves to pick up his groceries. He looks at her over his shoulder with narrowed eyes. "Break up with you?" He asks in a tight voice.

She looks at him with watery eyes, holding her head as high as she can manage. "What, do you think I just started packing after you walked out of my apartment that night?" She challenges as he slowly starts to pace his way toward her, his features seeming to get more etched as he approaches her. "You think I never heard your voicemail, how dark and angry and serious you sounded when you asked me to meet you. You think I didn't know that you were going to break up with me? You can't blame me for not wanting to face that after everything we went through, Castle."

Castle slowly paces closer to her than he has before, raising his brow but lowering his gaze as he seems to try and use every fiber of himself to pull back his anger. "You want to know why I asked you to meet me in person?" He challenges her, almost speaking through clenched teeth.

All she can do is watch in horrifying silence as he reaches silently into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. When he looks away from her and opens up his wallet and pulls out a small piece of dark cloth, she feels everything inside of her splinter apart. He surprises her by simply tossing the small trinket at her, not caring if she catches it or not. When she catches it between her chest and her hands, she looks up with her heart choking her and sees him striding away from her with his grocery bag in his hand.

Her hands are shaking as she takes the small piece of thick cloth in her palm and pulls out the engagement ring with her thumb and forefinger. "Oh my god..." she says in a trembling voice.

He was never planning on break up with her. She ran away from his proposal.

"I would have said yes." She says to herself as hot tears cloud her vision. When she looks back up toward him and sees him already half way through the open field, she calls back after him in a sob. "_I would have said yes!" _

* * *

Tucked underneath the layers of bedding in her motel room, she sobs loudly in the darkness of her room, staring at photos of them she's saved to break down over until now.

Just one day ago, she never thought she could get any more broken. She never thought she could lose any more after losing her job. She didn't think the world had any more bones of hers to break, didn't think she could be torn down any further. God, she wishes she was right. She's never felt this broken before.

Another wave of sobs rocks through her as she swipes to another picture of them in bed, his soft and caring smirk complimenting his soft and loving eyes as he holds a strand of her hair over his upper lip while she walks her fingers across his chest. She takes in a congested breath when tears flood her eyes again, looking at how happy they were.

She screwed up everything. She'll never get him back now. She's lost the only future she had left. And what kills her is that he was right about everything. She has no hope of ever getting him back. The idea that seemed valid just a few hours ago of him at least agreeing to work things out seems like a fool's hope now.

She swipes over to the next photo and she knows it's one of the last ones of them. This one is of their first real coffee date they met for after getting together. Her in a tan raincoat and blue top with him in a dark purple shirt. She can't help but smile over her emotions because she remembers thinking that a coffee date as a couple would be normal for them. But it was just so awkward. Neither of them could think of anything to converse over and they just ended up sitting there poking at their coffee cups.

But suddenly, she looks at the photo more closely and springs upright in the bed.

She pinches her fingers on the screen and zooms into their hands at the bottom of the picture, where they're each holding a cup of coffee.

And it's then that his words ring in her mind. _For four years, I've been right here. Four years just waiting for you to open your eyes and see that I'm right here. _

On a relaxing breath, she smiles.

_Every morning, I bring you a cup of coffee just to see a smile on your face... and I love you, Kate. _

She smiles softly as she gazes at the two cups in the picture.

* * *

He never mentioned anything to Alexis, but she could tell that something had shifted drastically when he got home. But a quiet night spent with his daughter on the couch as she did classwork, Sasha sleeping in a large ball in between them, was enough to at least keep the anger out of the air until she left for class. OSU is still about a forty-five-minute drive from the house so she's usually gone by the time he gets back from his morning run.

He slows to a stop as the path ends and the treeline cuts off a distance of twenty yards or so away from the house. Panting, he shakes his arms out and wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

When he comes out of the woods, he sees a dark blue sedan parked in front of his house. He would be curious, but he knows the woman leaning against the driver side of the hood in the same denim jacket he saw her in yesterday, a pair of light blue jeans and a dark top, her arms crossed.

On a hard sigh, he feels himself ice over when he sees her but quickly makes his way across the yard to meet her.

When she sees him approach her in a grey tank top and black gym pants, his body still sleek with sweat, she swallows thickly and shoves off the hood, turning around to grab the two cups of coffee that sit behind her.

"What do you want, Beckett?" He demands, tossing his arms out as he slows his approach toward her.

She blinks calmly and holds the two cups of coffee in front of her. "You."

Castle stares at her for a moment before smirking and nodding at her dismissively. "Nice try, Beckett. I already fell for that once."

She nods, knowing he has a lot of vitriol to spew out at her. "Okay, I know I deserve that." She says mostly to herself.

"What are you really doing here, Kate?" He demands, shifting his weight.

Her heart skips just as it always does when he uses her first name. "You spent four years getting me to realize that we belonged together, Rick." She says in a soft voice. "I guess you can call this returning the favor."

He lets out a hard breath and shakes his head for a moment, looking away from her. "You left me for a job, Beckett. How much more open can my eyes be at this point?"

"That doesn't mean I ever stopped loving you, Rick."

"Clearly, it does." He retorts. "You clearly moved on with your life without me eight months ago when you left me for a job, Kate. If you're here to blame me for doing the same, you're wasting your time because I've already moved on. Let's just say I learned from the best." He eyes her darkly and turns back around, moving toward his two-story lake house.

"I'll be back tomorrow." She calls out to him.

He stops and looks over his shoulder at her. "Tomorrow?"

"Mmhmm," She nods to him with a soft smile, approaching him with the two cups of coffee. "And the next day," she says, pacing toward him, "and the day after that, and the day after that. Every morning, I'll be right here... waiting for you, with two cups of coffee, just like you did for me."

She stops just a foot away from him as he looks over to her with ice in his veins. "And how long is that gonna last?"

She smiles softly, "Until you realize that you were right about us."

With a soft smile, she moves one of the cups toward him. When he looks down at the cup with the same vacant, stern look, she lifts her brow and smiles. After a moment, he only glances back up to her before turning around and making for his front door, leaving her holding two cups of coffee.

Unphased, she watches him as he goes inside.

* * *

_A/N: Sorry if this chapter ran a little long, but I really didn't want to break it up. I told you she'd be chasing after him. Did I deliver? ;) _

_Also, it was pointed out a few chapters ago by a reviewer. If you need to, picture 2019 Nathan Fillion as opposed to 2015 Nathan Fillion. _


	7. Chapter 7

He's putting more focus and intent into everything he does. Even something as simple as making himself a late afternoon lunch like he is now. Something small and light, but takes enough preparation to give his body something to do and his mind something to focus on.

It's around two o'clock that afternoon that Castle is in the kitchen of the house, which acts as the center of the downstairs, an open space that opens up to a dining area near the set of french doors that face toward the lake. He searches and rummages around in the fridge for a minute, trying to fool himself into thinking he either doesn't know what he's looking for or can't find it. He knows exactly where the mayo is.

On a huff, he grabs the plastic jar that sits in the door, almost slamming his hand down onto the lid, and pulls it out and slides it haphazardly onto the island behind him.

When the jar slides too far and hits the head of lettuce just enough to cause the knife to tumble into the sink with a loud, metallic clatter, over his sigh he can hear the jangle of Sasha's tags as she climbs off the blanket next to the couch to investigate. He can at least smile knowing that his dog will see him with food and stick around a bit. She's already very well behaved, but he never got into the idea of teaching her tricks.

Sasha comes bouncing in and as he always does, he quickly leans down and puts his hands in her fur, pulling her large head against his thigh. "Hey, you." He says as she wags her tail at his affection.

He's making a mental effort not to think about it. It's had no choice but to get good at it. He'd have driven himself off the nearest deep end he could find a short while after she left if he hadn't. A part of him is glad for the experience, a scolding fire that tempers a piece of hot iron to make it stronger. Without him learning how to bring himself back up all on his own, no help from alcohol or flirtatious redheaded deep-fried Twinkies, he's not sure he could have dealt with seeing her again.

But it isn't until he has this momentary boost in pride that he remembers this morning.

Castle tries to refocus his brain as he sees Sasha sit next to him and perk up her large German Shepard ears. Deciding to play with her a bit, he takes a long sliver of an onion slice and tosses it in the air over his side. Sasha reacts, excited, and follows the food in the air and jumps onto her hind legs to catch it in her mouth. When she lands with her head down, it only takes a second for her to spit the onion out onto the floor. She sniffs it for a second before looking back up to her master for something else.

Castle chuckles softly, "I didn't think you'd eat that." He says, bends over, and picks up the onion off the floor, scratching the side of Sasha's head as he stands back up.

Just as he's tossing the onion in the sink, he sees the door open. He looks up, feeling all of the fog and clutter clear from his mind as his daughter strides in through the door with her shoulder bag. "Hey, Dad," she greets him happily on a sigh.

"Hey, pumpkin," he says back and continues making his sandwich as Sasha quickly turns around, whacking her tail against Castle's leg when she turns to greet Alexis home from class. He smiles at her when Alexis smiles up at him after scratching Sasha behind her ears. "You want a sandwich?"

Alexis pulls out a stool and slides in behind the counter of the island, setting her shoulder back down on the corner of the counter. "No, I don't want to fill up."

Castle quirks his brow at her. "Fill up? It's a sandwich, Alexis." He waves at the counter with the butter knife.

"I know," she shrugs and folds her arms on top of the counter, "but I... sort of... have a date tonight." She tells him, her voice small.

Castle stops his knife in the middle of the jar of mayonnaise with a deadpan stare. "You have a date? Since when?" He asks, not giving her a chance.

"Since... I was driving home from school on Friday." She says, moving her hands from the counter to her lap and slouching forward.

"But Alexis," Castle chuckles as he continues to make his sandwich, "it's Monday. You were free all weekend."

Alexis blushes over her smile and nods. "Yeah, I know, he said that it was to uh..." she trails off, looking toward the ceiling, "make sure I made no assumptions of his intentions."

Castle nods widely as he sets the bread down and grabs the end of the loaf, grabbing the end of the bag and spinning it around. "Ah, the old 'set the date on a weeknight so he can't put any moves on you at the end of the date' trick." He jokes with his daughter with a smirk while moving to put away the bread. "I know this guy's game."

"Dad," Alexis sighs.

Castle smiles as he moves back toward the counter. "So, you meet this guy at school?" He asks, honestly curious.

"No, the uh..." Alexis seems to tighten and brushes her shoulder-length hair behind her ear in a nervous tick, "the gas station."

Castle is stopped again as he reaches into the bag of sliced chicken. "Now, that's a place you can be a real charmer. You know," Castle continues to joke as he puts the meat down onto the bread, "I think I'd like to meet this guy. Get some tips for his gas station game, get some good pick up lines." He jokes and moves back around to put the lunch meat away. "Hey, good-looking, why go with regular when you can get premium."

"Dad!" She whines loudly, chuckling despite herself.

Castle smiles and closes the fridge. "I'm sorry, pumpkin. I couldn't help it."

"Hey, at least I _have _a date, mister 'I turn down dates from attractive doctors'." Alexis fires back jokingly.

Castle smiles at her, a bit heavier than he had before and decides to stay silent, letting the conversation fall. It's not her fault. He knows it was only a matter of time before he thought of it on his own. It's going to be hard tonight, left to his own devices after yesterday. And after this morning, probably even harder.

He doesn't know if he can count on her. The only serious commitment she ever seemed to show, when it came down to it, was her job. He doesn't expect anything to change just because she temporarily can't get her old one back. She's probably on the phone now getting someone to find some sort of loophole or some extra funding no one had touched to get her job back right now.

He almost laughs darkly at her words. Maybe the woman he fell in love with was a figment of his imagination. It was life-threatening hurdle just getting her to give him a shot, now she expects him to believe that she thinks they belong together? Maybe what he said to Alexis the other day wasn't just a way to reassure her that he was happy with his life here. Maybe it was more truthful than he had intended it.

"Everything okay, Dad?" Alexis asks suddenly.

Castle looks up to her with a soft expression, taking a moment before answering. "Fine, sweetheart." He smiles casually as he flips his sandwich closed. "You sure you don't want one?" He asks her again.

She smiles at him again and nods, lifting her hand up to him. "I'm fine, Dad." She tells him and slides off the stool, dragging her shoulder bag off the counter with her.

As she makes her way passed the island, through the kitchen to head up the stairs, he stops her.

He always hated that Beckett could lie to him so easily, always with a straight face then expected him to just understand why she did it and forgive him, as if it was no big deal that she just didn't trust him. He can't justify hiding the truth from his own daughter. She's only out here for him anyway.

"Alexis?" He stops her and leans his arms against the surface of the counter, hanging his head.

She stops, clearly hearing her father's shift in tone and moves back to stand next to him before answering. "Yeah?"

On a soft sigh, he looks out ahead of him. "Beckett's back."

He can feel Alexis stiffen next to him, despite not facing her. A natural fatherly instinct to know when his little girl is in distress. "What..." she tries but lets it fall before tugging her shoulder bag off and sliding it to the floor, then moving over to the adjacent side of the counter next to him. "What do you mean?"

"At the grocery store yesterday, after you drove home." He begins to explain, still looking down to the counter. "I saw her."

"Well," Alexis mumbles, "what'd she say?"

Castle huffs out a short, cold breath through a set of flaring nostrils, "Nothing that made me change my mind." He grits. When Alexis doesn't respond, but instead just gives off more concern and worry, he finally lifts his head and looks over to her. "She said she quit her job in DC because it wasn't what she thought it was."

He can tell by the glimmer in Alexis' eye that she's jumping to conclusions.

He sighs sadly and shakes his head lethargically, "It wasn't because of me or anything, she just... didn't like it." He tosses out. "And she said that the NYPD is going through a budgetary freeze and can't bring her back on, so-"

"So she's here." Alexis points out for him. He can tell she's starting to get angry. Her voice gets a particular tightness to it when she gets upset.

He just nods slowly, gazing over to her with lidded eyes. "Yeah."

"Dad, does this mean that-"

"Nothing," he stops her sternly, lifting his fingers off the counter and looking over to her, "she said made anything I told you the other day any less true, Alexis." She stops and breathes out a sigh, slumping her tightened shoulders. "If anything, it just made it more true."

"So... so, what'd happened? What exactly did she say?"

He doesn't want to give her a play by play. She's had to witness enough of his personal life antics in between and after his divorces, and it's still a burden of guilt he has to bear at times, letting her see him in those ways. "I think it's more important what she didn't say, actually."

Alexis shakes her head, waiting for him to answer as he goes back to gazing out into nowhere. "And what was that?"

Looking over to her again, he knows he's not making a valiant enough effort to hide the hurt in his eyes. "Sorry." He says, shaking it off by putting a jump in his brow and a purse in his lips as he picks his sandwich up off the counter.

Before he can take a bite, he feels Alexis push herself into his side, hugging his chest with her arms as tight as she can. He chuckles sadly to himself as he rubs her arm. "I'm sorry, Dad."

"I don't want you to be sorry, pumpkin." He says as he hugs her tenderly. "You know what I want you to do?" He asks, a casual lift coming back into his voice.

Alexis pushes off of him and looks up to him.

Castle rubs her back and smiles. "I want you to enjoy your date tonight with mister gas station."

She fights her smile and nods. "Are you sure you'll be alright tonight?"

"Only way I couldn't be was if you called this guy and canceled because of me. I'll be fine, Alexis."

She smiles again and turns back to go up the stairs. Castle leans back against the counter on another hard sigh, looking between his sandwich and his eager looking Shepard-Collie mix that's been sitting next to him silently wagging her long tail across the tile floor. He's not even hungry anymore.

He rolls his eyes before putting it on a leftover saucer next to him and setting it on the floor.

* * *

Sometimes, the air here gets to her. Her motel room is stuffy and thick, but here at the park, it's crisp.

She's never had this much time on her hands. She's never been given this much time to think. She's only here for him. No other reason.

Sitting with her jacket buttoned up against the wind in the air, she has her arms tucked in between the chains of the swing and her hands stuffed in her pockets, one hand clutching her phone, the other softly petting the band of the engagement ring she still can't bring herself to even look at for more than a glance. When she looks away from the playground and down to the wood chips underneath the swing set, her throat starts to close again as emotions rise up.

She pulls out her phone after a moment and swipes her thumb across the screen until she finds his voicemail and hits play, putting it to her ear.

_"Beckett, it's Castle," _his voice is so low and gruff, just as she remembers. _"We need to talk and we need to talk in person. I'll be at the swings until four. Meet me when you get the chance." _

Her lips quiver and she closes her eyes to try and fight the tears, her hand shaking inside of her pocket as the ring seems to sting the skin on her fingers. The swings... he was going to ask her to marry him at the swings.

It would have been small and intimate... yet big and memorable for the two of them. It would have been perfect.

Beckett sniffs over her conflicting emotions, romantic and happy and excited over his proposal and compeltely heartbroken that she'll never get it and utter shame knowing that it was no one's fault but her's. After letting her phone fall down to her thigh, she flicks her hair back with the wind and gathers herself, still petting the band of the engagement in an absentminded motion. She picks up her phone again and moves to her contacts, pressing call when she finds the right one.

The phone stops ringing on the second ring when he picks up. "Hey, sweetie."

Beckett smiles over her emotions again, letting them vanish for a moment when she hears her dad. "Hey, Dad."

"Hey, how are you? Did your flight go okay?"

"I'm fine. It was okay." She answers one after the other. She draws in a long, audible breath, and breathes, "I found him."

There's a pause before he continues. "Something tells me it didn't go how you planned."

She's briefly overcome by her emotions, reliving the moment he flung the ring at her. "Dad, did Castle ever call you?" She asks out of nowhere. "Did he ever come talk to you on his own about... anything? Is there anything you haven't told me?" She asks him, her voice shaking.

"Katie, the last time Rick and I spoke was the precinct after you two went missing during that case."

"So he never called you? He never left any messages at your office? He never... he never sent you any emails?"

"Katie, what's going on?" He stops her in a serious, concerned tone.

Feeling weak, she tugs her hand out of her pocket and holds the ring in her lap, finally giving herself a chance to see the beautiful sparkle of the silver band and the dance of the stones. "He was going to propose to me, Dad."

She can hear him shift himself in his office chair on the other end of the line. There's another long pause on the other end before Jim finally speaks. "Katie, are you sure you're okay?"

"Dad, I'm fine." She mildly defends herself, only wanting him to get back on topic. "I was just wondering if he called you to... I don't know, it's probably stupid."

"You're wondering if Rick ever called me to ask for your hand?" He asks for her.

She breathes out a shaky breath, wandering her eyes around the clouds that linger the blue sky. "It's stupid, I know." She sighs, looking back down to the ring pinched between her fingers. "Castle never exactly exuded the traditional vibe, huh?" She tries to joke, but knows she failed when she hears it leave her mouth.

"Katie," he says in a firm, almost loving tone, "I'm still worried about you being out there by yourself."

Beckett scoffs half-heartedly as she rolls her eyes before looking over the playground and the well-groomed suburban homes behind it. "If you saw this town, Dad, you'd think it's the safest place on Earth."

"That's not what I'm worried about, Katie. You know that." He calls her out.

She shakes her head and looks down at the ring one last time before shoving it back in the pocket of her denim jacket, not bearing to look at it anymore. "I'm a big girl, Dad. I'll be fine."

"So," Jim continues, "what happened with Rick? How'd it go?"

"About as well as you'd expect from someone who got stood up at a marriage proposal." She explains, still petting the engagement band in her pocket. "I saw him again this morning and told him that I wanted to give it another chance. And... when he said no, I said that I'll be back tomorrow." She says, taking a pause to really feel the engagement ring she's petting. "And that's what I plan to do... until I get him back."

She hears her father sigh on the other end of the line and can't tell what kind of sigh it is. "Even though I worry about you sometimes, you know I'm proud of you, right?"

She smiles to herself as she nods and looks down to the woodchips again. It's easy to forget that no matter what she puts others through or is put through by others, there will always be one person that has her back in the world. "I know, Dad."

"Okay, I love you. Alright, Katie?"

"Love you too, Dad." She says a few seconds before hanging up the phone and sliding her phone back into her opposite pocket.

He loved her enough to buy a ring and make an effort to tell her that he wanted them to promise their lives to each other. Even after everything she put him through, with the jealousy and distrust she seeded in him with Vaughn to the lies and the second-best status she shoved on him with her job in DC, he still felt enough love for her and had enough faith in their relationship to want to promise his life to her.

On a soft, solidifying breath out, she continues to pet the band of the engagement ring in her pocket. She just has to make him realize that he loved the right person.

And she has no plans on going anywhere until he does.


	8. Chapter 8

It's not home, but she doesn't exactly have one of those anymore. One thing she can say about Crestfield is how peaceful it is.

If she had to do this at the loft, show up every morning after dealing with the hectic foot traffic, the long lines at the coffee stand or the cafe, the rude people, the brake dust, the car exhaust, she would have a hard time keeping up hope. But here, it's peaceful in the morning. The coffee shop she goes to is nice and openly spaced, not cramped or crowded and manned by rude staff that seem indifferent to even be on the planet, let alone taking her order. They're nice and friendly to her. They know their regular customers by name, ask about their families and their jobs that they're off to.

But what gets her the most is right now, leaning against the hood of her blue Toyota sedan rental waiting for him to show, is the tranquility.

It's around eight in the morning and the sun is just peeking over the tall treeline to the east on the other side of the lake, shining warmly into her eyes. The lake is shimmering and she can see an old man out on a small boat off in the distance near the far shore peacefully holding a fishing pole over the port side. She watches with a smile as the old man lifts his hand out and motions over a small boy, probably his grandson, that's sitting near the back.

She gets a tingle over her skin at an unexpected rush of almost uncomfortable nostalgia as the grandfather lifts his grandson onto his lap with a big smile and puts the fishing pole in his hands, the little boy looking excited. Her dad used to take her fishing in the summer. Her first summer when she was five after her parents had bought the cabin. He still has a picture of her as a little girl posing proudly with the first fish she caught somewhere, half her eyes hidden with her dad's hat.

Beckett breathes out a reverent breath as her mind gets lost in memory and looks down to the wet sticking out of her shoes.

After a few more minutes of waiting, she catches a glimpse of someone coming out of the woods on the other side of his yard. Dressed in a pair of grey gym pants and a black t-shirt with the sleeves cut, the sun seems to catch him just right to make his skin glisten, illuminating his new physique in just the right light. Her throat snaps shut and her skin quickly flushes under her jeans and leather jacket.

She always found him sexy and she never was afraid to let him know it, always roving her palms around his body as jealously as she could when they'd make love. And a part of her feels almost guilty that she's losing her senses at the amount of sexual desire and carnal lust he's causing her now.

That was never why she fell for him. If it was, she would have bedded him when he first tossed out the offer.

She watches with a shortness in her breath as he strolls out of the woods and through his yard toward his house, rolling his neck and shaking out his arms. She reaches behind her and grabs the two cups sitting on her hood as quickly as she can, only wanting to go back to watching him. She turns back just in time to see him holding his arms behind him, making his shirt tighten against pecs and abs. On a shaky sigh, she gingerly holds the two cups in front of her and waits for him to look over to her. She can feel her fingers tingle at the feeling of wanting to explore his new muscles.

And as Castle is shaking out is singing muscles from his morning run through the woods, he ducks under the cable of Sasha's lead and looks up, more surprised than he thought he'd be when he sees her, standing right where she was the morning before, holding two identical cups of coffee in her hands with a calm, confident, lidded gaze.

A part of him thought that she was bluffing. Most of him was wishing on it. But a small part of him wanted her to show up this morning, just to know and remember the feeling of being the one being impatient, short, and insulting.

Castle draws in a long breath, cleansing his lungs of his workout and lets it out while looking up to her again with a stern, focused glare.

She sees his expression as he slowly starts to approach her, stopping near the stone path that cuts through his yard from the curb to the wooden steps that lead up to the patio of his lake house. "You're surprised I'm here?" she hollers over to him.

With his lungs still coming down from his workout, he starts, "Honestly?" He says on a light pant, stepping over the pathway in a slow meander toward her. "Yeah, I am surprised."

Beckett blinks softly, not affected by his assumptions. "Why?" She asks in a softer voice as he slowly paces closer toward her.

"Well," he pants again lightly, craning his neck down for a moment, "I just never thought of you as one to keep a promise like that."

Her heart hurts, but she fights it, knowing a part of her deserves every sneer he'll be tossing at her. She can't help but crack a soft smirk and shake her head at him, "If you think acting like an ass will get rid of me, you're wrong." She says. He just stays silent, scowling at him as the sun shines in her eyes. "I'll still be here." She tells him, looking him straight in the eye.

Castle's chest tigthens underneath his sweat-dampened tank top. His eyes flick away from her and down to the coffee cup in her right hand as she lifts it up to him.

"Even if you don't take this." She tells him as she lifts her own latte up to her lips.

Castle watches, only realizing it's too intensely until it's too late, as she lifts her head to take a sip of her coffee. He always enjoyed watching her take the first sip of the coffee he'd bring her. There was a moment of calmness and serenity that would come over her at that first sip, brought out of a world out to get her by something small and simple he did for her every morning. But now, it all feels meaningless. The only thing he can do now as he watches her slide the coffee down her throat is remember exactly where on her neck he used to kiss her to make her squirm.

But it's a thought that doesn't last long in his mind before looking down to the grass again, pretending to himself that it's out of frustration with her by shaking his head.

She takes her cup from her lips and sucks at her top lip with her tongue for a second. "I'm not leaving until I get you back, Rick."

On a hard sigh, he looks back up to her. "I've moved on, Kate."

Her heart flutters across her chest like a wild bird trapped in a cage at the sound of her first name on his lips again. But what he said has no effect on her. "I don't care." She says with a soft smile. "I haven't... and I'm not stopping until I get you back."

"Beckett," he sighs again, lifting his hand to rub his jaw and palm his chin for a second, pacing toward her almost impendingly. He stops just a few feet short of her as she's letting the other coffee cup down. "You left me..." he trails off, taking another step forward and leaning toward her, "for a _job!" _He grits.

The wild bird in her chest quickly turns to stone and sinks into her stomach. "Castle, I-"

"And the only reason you're even here is because that job wasn't what you thought it was and you only temporarily can't get your old one back." He says, shrugging his shoulders.

Her throat quivers in rising emotions when he says that. She can't tell him the truth. But she knows him. Even saying the word classified is a dog whistle for him to go running head first at it. But she knows that telling him the truth of what happened will only make the battle to get him back go from a battle up Mount Everest to impossible. She never left her job on her own. She never made a conscious desicion to quit the AG's office... and she'll only admit it to herself if broken down to her core that she probably never would have.

"So if you're expecting me reconsider after this long because what you left me for didn't work out, you might as well quit while you're ahead." He says to her dismissively and turns to walk off.

But her eyes are burning and she can't stop the fight rising in her. "Why?!" She demands of his back, stomping forward a step. He stops and looks over his shoulder at her with the same stern glare. "I _love _you, Castle. That was enough to keep you coming back, wasn't it? Why can't it be enough for me too?"

He turns to face her again, leaning into her more imposingly than before. "Because you were _always _my first choice."

Her throat closes and she has to physically put all her focus into choking back her sob so she doesn't break down again, knowing it would only cascade.

"I was only ever there for you, Beckett. Whether it was because you inspired me to write or because you let me help you solve murders, or because I was trying to convince you to just give me a chance over guys like Demming or Josh." He sneers darkly, leaning away from her. "Hell, even Vaughn."

Her vision blurs and she hopes that he doesn't notice the tears pooling in her eyes, blinking as rapidly as she can to get rid of them before they run down her face. "Castle, none of those guys were you."

All he can do is chuckle in his throat, shaking his head. "I think that's the whole point, Beckett." He says, eyeing her as he places his hands on his hips. "You were always my first choice and I was always your last and really," he says, taking another slow step toward her, tossing his arms out, "I don't see how that's changed."

"Castle, I'm here. I'm-"

"You chose a job over me and left. Then when that job let you down, you went back and tried to get your old one back. And when they told you that you had to wait until someone retired because of a budget freeze, only then did you choose me." He lectures her in a calm, dark tone. "So to answer your question, that's why it's not enough for me that you're just here."

When he turns away from her again and quickly starts walking toward his porch, she cracks. "Alright, _fine!" _She calls after him, marching through the yard to catch up to him. "I may have lost my job in DC and I may have tried to get my job with the NYPD back. I may have tried to get my apartment back from my cousin and tried to get help from my friends before deciding to come after you."

He pauses a few feet away from the steps up to the porch and turns around, sending her the same cold, vacant glare as before.

With a shaky breath, she holds his cold gaze. "I lost my career... I lost my home, I lost my friends, but I also lost the man I love and in case you haven't _figured _that out yet," she spits emotionally, "that's _you. _And I may have tried to get my old life back after I left DC and failed, but do you want to know what makes you different?" She asks him pointedly, taking another step to put herself a foot away from him.

He looks over at her, seeing a clear glisten in her hazel eyes.

"You're the only thing that I lost that I'm willing to put up a _fight _for to get back."

Castle watches as a tear leaks out from her right eye and cuts a path down her cheek, her tear-filled eyes still looking up at him. He breathes softly, looking down at the two coffee cups in her hands for a second before looking back up to her. "You do realize you'll be fighting _me, _right?"

Beckett's heart seems to shiver inside of her throat as if he's accepting her challenge almost. Smiling softly over the battle she knows she lost with her tears, she lifts his cup up to him again. "Then en garde, Mr. Castle."

His eyes travel between the cup in her hands and her for a quick moment before he turns away from her silently, jumping up the four steps of his porch and quickly darts for the front door, opening it to a greyish-tan German Shepard with long fur and a black back jumping on him. She watches as he catches the dog's head in his hands, going through the door as the dog hangs itself over his arm and as Castle closes the door behind him.

When she takes in a long breath of the crisp Oregon air to try and dispell the residual emotions, she turns and starts through his yard back to her rental car to just waste more time driving around town as she has been, two cups full of coffee just as they were yesterday. When she gets to the curb, she hears the dog let out a single bark from inside. When she turns, she sees the German Shepard standing up against the windowsill of the window left of the front door, its ears perked up and it's head cocked off to one side.

She smiles honestly at the cuteness of the dog just before Castle seems to get its attention from the other side of the house and the dog heads off.

On another soft sigh, she looks into the window.

It went better than she thought it would for the second day.

* * *

_A/N:Lucky for you guys, the Borderlands 3 patch that dropped on Thursday was kind of a bust for my character._

_I want to clear something up real quick. This story will not be a "team-Castle" or "team-Beckett" story. This is a Caskett story. I've always tried hard not to favor one character over another and make them balanced in my writing. They are both flawed human beings, capable of making mistakes. To me, stories that tend to favor one character over the other, treating one as an emotional punching bag and the other as an emotional Mary/Gary Sue always tend to come off to me as if the writer doesn't even want the characters together at all. _

_I'm hoping that this story, as it gets more fleshed out and the plot starts to gain more traction, that these two characters will come off as both having grown, instead of one having to grow and do all the work to fit with the other. Let me know, if this sounds about right. _


	9. Chapter 9

Beckett stops on the opposite side of the street of the coffee shop. Her eyes are locked onto the needle in the bottom left of the dash. They have been the past couple times she's started and stopped the car.

Just dropped down passed a quarter of a tank.

With a bit of a shaky breath out, she unbuckles her seatbelt and climbs out of her rental car, only looking down the street to check for traffic once she's already halfway across. She jumps onto the sidewalk and pulls open the painted white door, looking through the large glass window in the middle of it to see that the L shaped counter is free of a line, but with a few lingering customers sitting at tables near the windows on the right side of the coffee shop. She's been one of those people a day or two, sitting in one of their leather wingbacks on her phone, utilizing their free wifi and free refills on coffee.

She steps inside and the two women behind the counter, looking like identical twins, both look up to Beckett with bright smiles. "Morning," the one behind the register chirps.

"Hi," Beckett breathes out and quickly steps up to the counter, pulling her wallet out of her back pocket. "Large skim latte with two pumps sugar-free vanilla,' she parrots her order to the smiling woman as she pokes in Beckett's order into the touchpad, probably already punching in her second item, "and a large cappuccino."

Beckett pulls open the fold of her wallet and flicks her thumbnail over the bills she has left, a tight knot forming in her throat. She thought she had more than this. "Six forty-seven." She's told.

Beckett swallows passed the lump in her throat and hands the women a ten, then looks back into the fold of her wallet.

No, she'll be fine. She has plenty in savings. Enough to last her a couple weeks. She folds her wallet back up and slides it into her back pocket and then digs her phone out of her side pocket while the woman hands her her change. Without much thought, Beckett takes one of the singles in one hand and putting the rest in the jar next to the register that has a cartoon drawing of a cow taped upside down onto the front with a label underneath reading 'tipping'.

With her phone in her hand, she cracks a smirk at the tip jar and looks down to her screen. "You've been coming in here for a while. You new in town?" The woman behind the register asks her.

Beckett looks up from her phone with a raised brow. She's not really used to wait staff actually acknowledging her. She's ordered coffee thousands of times at dozens of coffee shops and coffee stands in her life and never really been asked about anything so... trivial... that didn't have the intent of getting her phone number. "Uh..." She starts at first, finally remembering to smile politely only after a few seconds of awkwardly staring, "something like that."

The woman nods as the other at the other side of the counter behind the espresso machine prepares her order. "Visiting family?" She asks in a friendly tone.

She knows she's trying to be nice. She's just not all that collaborated to deal with complete strangers actually asking her things like this like they actually want to know. "No, I'm just..." she decides to mince words, shrugging her shoulders and pouting, "in town... kinda.'

The woman nods with a smile. "Where're you from?" She continues, her voice bright and almost poppy.

"New York... Manhattan, actually." Beckett nods.

The woman's brow shoots up as she drapes her arm over the tall counter next to the register. "Wow," she says largely. "Must be pretty different, huh? This small town like Crestfield."

Beckett smiles and looks out the large picture windows of the store, out onto the quiet, quaint town. "Yeah," she sighs, internally hoping to at least awkwardly end the conversation there.

"You like it here so far?" The woman chirps again.

A slight swell of guilty impatience swells in her chest as she slowly nods at the woman again. "Yeah," she smiles, "it's definitely uh..." she shrugs, looking back out the window, "quieter. Definitely a lot cleaner, less crowded, less noisy."

"Hey," the other woman chimes in from behind the espresso machine, and Beckett quickly looks over, "is it true that you have to shower brake dust out of your hair and stuff?"

Beckett guffaws at that, smiling honestly despite herself and starting to chuckle, nodding at the woman. "Yeah, you uh... you spend enough time on the streets, that stuff will get on you and..." she gives herself an obvious expression and looks back down to her phone, "being a cop I did a lot of that." She says, mostly to herself.

"Oh, you're a cop?" The woman behind the register chimes back in.

"Well," Beckett's throat closes again, "I used to be. I... quit... a while ago." She stumbles over her words. "Homicide detective."

"Oh, well you should have told us that." The woman waves at her, punching in the touchpad. "We offer police a ten percent discount."

Beckett smiles again, despite the situation, "Well, I'm not really a cop anymore, so..."

"Oh, Beth," the other woman says, "she solved murders and stuff. Just..." The woman grins and narrows her eyes at her.

Beth eyes the other woman and eventually nods, tapping her middle finger against the touchpad a few more times before looking back up to her. "What was your name?"

Beckett shakes her head for a moment. "Uh-Beckett... Kate. Kate Beckett."

"Nice to meet you, Kate." Beth says. "I'm Beth and this is my sister Barbra." Beckett looks over and gives the other woman an obligatory waves. "So, what're you in town for, Kate?" Beth sighs.

Beckett shakes her head, thinking up a neutral answer. "I'm-"

It's then that the door bursts open and a woman with short, wavy blonde hair clad in a pair of teal scrubs speed walks through the coffee shop. "Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi..." she stammers and quickly hands Barbra a travel mug.

"You're late for work again, Sierra." Barbra sighs as she takes the travel mug from her.

"Yeah, yeah, already been made _not _aware of that by my alarm clock so just-" The woman circles her hand as she turns toward the register. She meets Beckett's eyes for a moment with a bright, toothy, friendly smile and a rushed sigh. "Hi," she breathes and takes her phone out of her shoulder bag.

Beckett smiles neutrally at the woman and steps aside, deciding to finally check her bank account on her phone while she waits. She knows she has plenty in savings. She'll be fine. Maybe she can last just putting another thirty dollars in the tank.

"You gonna tell us yet, Sierra?" Barbra asks.

Beckett watches out of the corner of her eye as the app on her phone loads. Sierra looks up, hunched over the opening of her bag, having stopped in the middle of digging. "Bout what?"

"If you don't fess up," Beth says with a sly smile, "I'm not letting you pay."

Sierra stares at her, "But I have money," Sierra says before pinching her brow and looking back down into her bag, "somewhere, I have money somewhere."

"Sierra, you asked out the town celebrity and have been avoiding the topic for days." Beth says as she moves around the back of the counter toward her sister.

Beckett watches out of the corner of her eye, not really thinking anything of it as she pads her thumb onto the password box to pull up the keyboard. "I am also late for work." She says, reaching over the counter to try and get her travel mug back, grasping her fingers into her palms. "And that's my favorite mug, Barb. Give it."

"Sierra," Barbra says, "you work with dead people. Chill out."

"Tell us, Sierra," Beth demands, Beckett only noticing out of the corner of her eye that she's giving the woman the exact same expectant expression as her sister.

On a huff, Sierra's shoulders droop and her bag falls down onto the bend of her wrist. "Yes, I asked out Richard Castle."

"Wu-" Beckett physically stops herself, her eyes jolting up to look at the woman. Everything inside of her just crawled with the most sickening feeling she's ever felt, her entire layer of skin over all of her body feeling as if it wants to rearrange itself over her bones. Her heart is in her throat, but she can't feel herself breathe.

"And?" The twins ask in unison.

"_And _what? He shot me down. End... oh... story." Sierra says and pulls her bag back onto her shoulders.

"See..." Beth says and moves back around the counter to the register, where Beckett is trying her hardest to remain unnoticed. "The guy is rich, he's famous, he is gorgeous, he's charming, and he lives in a town of _less _than four thousand people. That's not the end of the story. You need to try again."

"Yes, and he also has a very tightly muscled back," Sierra mutters under her breath... but she catches it. She can't tell if the bile in her throat is from rage or hopelessness. She can feel her throat want to quiver, remembering what he feels when she splays her hands onto his back as he's slowly making love to her. When he used to, anyway. "He also said that he just got out of a relationship, Beth."

"Be," Barbra says from across the coffee shop, "eff... dee."

"Right," Sierra chuckles, "like I want to be the cheap rebound."

"Be _Richard Castle's _cheap rebound." Beth seems to point out.

"Thanks," Sierra says sarcastically as she presents a five to her and flicks it down to the counter. "I swear, I'm so sick of this hen house." Sierra mutters loudly as she quickly grabs her travel mug back from Barbra, who's still smiling slyly, then quickly darts back out the door.

Beckett swallows thickly and looks back down to her phone, not bothering to even check her bank account anymore. She couldn't focus on it if she tried.

These women, none of them see in him what she sees, do they? She always knew he was handsome and charming. He made no secret of it. What he did make a secret of is what she fell for. How great of a father he is, how selfless he can be, how caring and noble he can be. Or that child-like twinkle his baby blue eyes got when he figured something out about a hard case. That waggle in his brow and that proud smirk his lips would give her when he told her some small tidbit of information that she needed but didn't know it.

There was so much that she never realized she loves him for.

"Kate?" Barbra calls for her. Beckett looks back up to her, presenting her with two white cups with brown paper sleeves.

* * *

A short drive later, Kate stands in the same spot as she has been all week, leaning against the hood of her rental car with her hands tucked in her pocket with the coffee sitting on her hood, waiting for the man she loves.

She can't really describe this feeling.

She can't tell if she's dying to know what happened to make that woman say what she said about his back muscles being tight, or if she'd kill the first person that tried to tell her the details. Her mind feels as if it wants to violate her with images of the two of them and it's making her almost sick to her stomach. Just the thought of the two of them, the fact that at some point, that woman was talking to him and smiling at him, was interested in him and asked him out.

He said no, Kate, she tries to reassure herself. She takes in a nervous but solid breath and clenches her jaw. He said no.

After another couple of minutes of Castle's dog looking at her through the window, she spots him coming out of the woods as he has every morning, in a pair of black gym pants and a white sleeveless t-shirt. Beckett looks at him and feels everything tighten, her mind wanting again to assault her with jealous images when she sees him, and takes the cups in her hands, pushing off the hood of her car.

But just as he has the past three mornings, he simply keeps his neck craned and his eyes down to the grass as he makes for the back entrance of his house.

Her heart is already weakened by this morning. She can't take it anymore. For almost a week, he's been just brushing her off without a word. "You know, I know I pushed you away as hard as I could for four years," she hollers over to him, "but I at least _talked _to you!"

With hot tears stinging her eyes, she watches as the blurry vision of him stops just as he's going under the cable of his dog's lead. After a moment, he seems to sigh heavily and starts to approach her. Halfway across his yard, he finally calls out to her. "I don't know what you expect me to say, Beckett." He says to her, lifting his arms up in a shrug.

She waits for him to get closer before speaking. "Just say anything, Castle."

"Say anything?" He almost mocks. "You left me for a job. That good enough?" He says and starts to turn off again.

"Castle, can we _please _just fight about this?"

He stops and spins back around to her, throwing his arms out again. "I don't want to fight about this, Beckett. I want to be done with this."

"Castle," she says softly on a shaky breath, taking a few slow steps toward him, "I had... no- _idea_... you were planning on proposing to me." She finally manages to get out in a soiled voice.

Castle remains unphased and keeps a frustrated, lidded gazed on her. "That shouldn't have mattered, Kate."

Her first name... at a time like this. She already feels like she's about to break. She doesn't need that now, especially in the soft tone he just said it in. "But it mattered at the time, Rick."

"It wouldn't have to me." He says in a low voice.

With that, she suddenly feels lost. "What... what do you mean?"

"If I thought that you were planning on breaking up with me, do you think I would have just left?" He asks her with a tight clench in his jaw. Her throat closes again and she's suddenly at a loss for words... because she knows for a fact what the answer is. He's proven it to her. When all she can do is close her mouth and look at him sadly, he raises his brow after a long moment. "That wasn't a rhetorical question, Beckett!" He snaps.

"No." She said over him. "No, you wouldn't have left." She answers him, her eyes burning again. "You would have stayed."

Castle just shakes his head, never looking away from her eyes. "So why didn't you?"

Over his low voice, she can't think of an answer. There's no way she can answer this to make them come out of it better. "Castle..." she says in a tight voice, shaking her head and craning her head down for a moment before looking back up to him, "there's nothing I can say to that that will help anything so-"

"Well, you know," he starts over her, "the truth would be a nice change of pace." He narrows his eyes to her.

She swallows thickly passed her emotions lodged in her throat and feels her heart ready itself to crack. "You wouldn't talk about our future." She shrugs her shoulders. "So when I got the interview for the job in DC, I..." she trails off, her throat closing again. "Castle, there's no point in-"

"What..." he stops her again, "was it... Beckett?" He pushes her angrily.

She breathes out another shaky breath and nods. "I thought it was a great opportunity to do something more important in the world and I really wanted it."

Castle nods at her with a deep furrow in his brow and seems to take a pause to silently torture her for a moment before continuing. "So why didn't you tell me about it?"

Beckett feels her eyes burn and her heart tell herself that it's about to break. She has to stop her chest from shaking in a sob. "I wanted the job more than you."

She can hear him let out a hard breath through a set of flaring nostrils as he cranes his neck. It only takes him a moment to look back up out onto the yard. "Nice talk, Beckett." He says sarcastically and quickly turns back around toward his house and storms off away from her.

She watches him go, but a part of her still feels resilient. "See you tomorrow."

That makes him stop a ways away from her and turn over his shoulder at her. "Really?"

She meets his eyes and lets her misery dissipate. "Yes," she says confidently, slowly making her way over to him. "I told you, Castle. I'm not stopping until I get you back."

"Beckett," he tries, annoyed.

"I don't care how long it takes, Castle." She stops him. "I don't care how much venom and anger you spit at me. I deserve every bit of it." She tells him, shaking her head. "I don't care if you've moved on and I don't care if you how many times you just brush me off. I'll _still _be here, every morning, _just _like you were." She says pointedly, looking into his faded, angry blue eyes. "I don't care if I... if I have to live in a _box _in the woods behind your house, if that's what it takes, Castle."

Castle just eyes her slightly before breathing out slowly.

"I'll still see you tomorrow."

* * *

It's later that evening that Castle is sitting in his office. Alexis is at school studying and told him not to wait up. So tonight, it's just him, Sasha laying in the leather recliner against the wall next to his desk, sound asleep.

After finally deciding, he grabs his phone and makes the call, waiting for him to answer. "Hello?"

"Robert," Castle greets the other end of the line. "Hey, it's Rick." He says with a smile.

"Ricky!" He exclaims, "what you are calling me for, huh? Word has it you don't live in New York anymore."

"No, I'm just calling in a bit of a favor, that's all."

"Name it, Ricky. After you and your partner helped clear my name, you know my office is always open to you."

"Well, Rob, that's sort of what I'm calling you about." Castle says, leaning back in his chair and spinning around to face Sasha. "I heard about the budget freeze and I was hoping to make a donation."

"Budget freeze?" Robert asks.

"Yeah," Castle continues, "I was hoping to get my partner back on the force."

"Ricky, I'm not aware of any budget freeze."

Castle's brow pinches and he stops tapping his pen against the surface of his desk. "What are you talking about?" He almost chuckles.

"No, me and Winslow had a meeting about it uh... just a few days ago, in fact. We're doing fine." He says casually.

Things could change, maybe it was just a new development. "Well, I know that you might be a bit uh..." he searches for the right term, "overmanned, but Robert," he chuckles, "there has to be room for the homicide detective that cleared you, can't there?"

"Ricky," the mayor chuckles.

"Come on, it'd be a favor for me. Last one, I promise."

"Ricky, honestly, I have no clue what you're talking about."

"What..." he tries, "well, I know that you can't bring her back on unless someone retires, but-"

"Ricky," the mayor stops him on another chuckle, "who told you that? We have openings... all over the city. The Eighth... the Thirteenth."

It's then that his heart turns cold. All he can do is nod to himself. "Well, thanks for the info, Rob."

The mayor chuckles, "Hey, fly me out there sometime, huh?"

"First class, Rob." Castle forces his tone and doesn't bother in a farewell, simply deciding to end the call and let his arm fall onto the rest of the chair.

She lied to him... again. She just can't stand telling him the truth, can she?

On another hard sigh... he knows he still has a problem to solve. He didn't want it to come to this. He knows her. She'll hate it. But nonetheless, he's still calling the next person in his contact list and is begrudgingly waiting for the call to get picked up. "This is Gina." She says on a sigh.

With a sigh of his own, he begins. "Gina... it's Rick."

"Oh!" Gina starts loudly, "Rick, so good to hear from you, you're only... let's see... eight and a half months late for our meeting."

"Please... Gina..." he sighs deeply, his eyes drifting shut, "I'm really not in the mood right now. I called you for a reason."

He can hear an impatient sigh being blown into the receiver. "What is it?"

"I need you to put me in touch with the person in charge of the account I had you set up."

"The account, you mean the-"

"Yes... Gina," he interrupts her. "Just send me their contact, please?"

"Alright, I'll send it to you. Hang on," Gina says while Rick listens to the clack of her keys. "Check your email, Rick, and... I don't suppose I'm allowed to ask questions?"

Castle lets out a breath, "No," he says and hangs up the phone.


	10. Chapter 10

"Hey, sweetie," it's refreshing to hear a friendly, comforting voice. It catches her off guard in a way.

"Hey, Dad," she smiles into the receiver of her phone, padding around the short, scratchy carpet of her motel room with soft elevator jazz playing on the TV from the real estate channel she has on just for the noise.

"Hey, how're you doing?" He asks. Beckett takes a moment to revel in the feeling of someone genuinely worried and curious of what she's been doing and if she's okay.

Beckett paces back and forth a bit absentmindedly at the foot of the bed, dragging the pad of her finger across the table. "I'm fine." She answers, knowing she's giving herself away by the amount of lift she put into her voice.

"Katie," her dad seems to sigh.

"Dad, I'm fine, I promise." She almost chuckles as she turns around to pace back the other way. "I mean, it's been..." she starts to say but trails off, not really knowing how to describe things. And all words she had formed in her mind, along with the fact that she's on the phone, leave her mind when she sees the engagement ring resting right next to the necklace holding her mother's ring.

"Katie, I'm still worried about you." Her dad says in his usual low, worried tone.

"Dad," she sighs, just as she did back in her teens, and takes the ring in her fingers, spinning around and bouncing down onto the foot of the bed. "I'm not running after killers anymore. I'm..." she trails off again, letting her hand fall into her lap as the sparkle of the diamonds catches the light shining through the first floor window. "I'm not really allowed to do that anymore, so... so you can unclench your gut, okay?"

She can hear him breathe a sigh on the other end of the line, "Well, are you at least holding up financially?" He says, knowing he's just covering the bases.

"Dad, I'm fine." She rolls her eyes and rolls the band of the ring around in between her thumb and fore finger. It's about the closest thing to letting it slip onto her finger that she can bare.

"So, you have enough in savings?" He asks, challenging her with his tone.

"I..." she loses herself for a second, giving herself away to him, "I'm not worried about that right now."

"Katie," he sighs again, probably propping his head up with his hand by now.

"I'm here to get Castle back, Dad. I'll worry about everything else later." She defends herself, looking back down to the ring still rolling in between her fingers. God, she wishes she could wear this. "I know he's not making it easy on me, but I'm not worried about anything else right now."

Her dad takes a pause, giving her a chance to gaze down at the stones, seeing how many ways she can get the lights to dance off the edges as she turns it. "Well, are you at least keep yourself busy?"

She chuckles to herself, "Dad, I'm sitting in my motel room at seven in the morning watching the real estate listings on TV."

"Kate, are you sure you don't want me to come out there with you?"

"No, Dad," she says quickly, sitting up on the bed, "I'm fine, really. I don't want you to put your life on hold because of me."

"You're my daughter, Katie." He seems to say with a smile. "There's no such thing as putting my life on hold for you."

She rolls her eyes, a small lump in her throat forming despite herself. "You know what I mean." She says, listening to her dad's soft, satisfied chuckle. "Castle's really shutting me out and I can't get through to him. I don't want to drag you into all of this."

"He'll come around, Katie." He says, probably trying to reassure her. She can't say anything to that, suddenly feeling awash with hopelessness. And after a long pause between the two, she draws in a long, quiet breath, trying her damndest not to shake. 'Believe me, something like that doesn't really go away."

"Dad, I..." she tries, wanting to tell him how much she broke and how much she left in complete shambles, "Dad, I should go before I miss him, okay?"

"Katie," he sighs again.

"I'm fine, Dad. I promise, okay?" She rushes. "I love you."

"I love you too, sweetie." He says as she's pulling her phone from her ear.

She ends the call and lets the phone fall down into the covers with a haphazard bounce. With the same lump knotting her throat together, she looks down to the ring in her fingers again. She could have been engaged to him right now. She could have been planning their wedding with him, picking out a venue, decore, bickering over the guest list and getting into a fight knowing it was just so they could apologize and make love. She could be writing her vows right now. She's spent hours staring at this ring, playing over the scene in her mind of him down on one knee at the swings, telling her that he loves her, that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, standing up and kissing her just as passionately as he always did, then slipping this ring on her finger.

Beckett can't help but let an emotionally charged chuckle escape her throat, playing over the scene again as she gazes down at the ring. After a moment, her eyes flick over to her left hand and she splays out her fingers, looking between her ring finger and the ring, going back and forth. Her eyes are already burning. Her hand trembles as her other hand fights temptation. She can't. He was supposed to be the one to put this on her finger. This ring is... was... a symbol of the promise they would be making to each other.

They haven't made that promise yet.

Before the warm metal of the band can touch her ring finger, she pulls it back into her palm and stuffs it into her pocket and stands up, quickly moving over to her luggage to slip on her running shoes. She grabs her wallet and her phone before grabbing her denim jacket that's hanging over the back of one of the chairs and heads for the door. She pulls open the door and starts to draw in a long, refreshing breath of the cool morning air.

It's still another bright, quiet, sunny day. She can't help but admit that this place is growing on her. "Oh, right over there." She hears from the other end of the lot.

Paying it no mind over the rustle of the trees in the wind, she steps across the walkway and up to her rental car parked right in front of her room. "Kate Beckett?" A male voice calls to her from the entrance to the office of the motel.

Beckett turns to see a man in dark slacks, a polo shirt, cardigan, and a dark hat, stepping around a delivery van with a large cardboard envelope in his hand. "Yes?" She cautiously asks.

The courier quickly steps up to her and hands her an electronic clipboard. "Sign here, please?" He says.

"Uh..." she trails off, quickly signing her name haphazardly onto the pad. She hands it back to him and when he simply takes the board and hands her the large, cardboard envelope and gives her a smile and rushes off, she's left shaking her head. "Hmm," she hums to herself as she rips off the tab at the top of the envelope.

The cardboard feels mostly empty but when she tips it up, she feels a letter-sized envelope fall out into her palm. With a pinched brow, she takes the smaller envelope and places the cardboard onto the hood of her rental car. Her heart hardens when she sees a familiar logo in the return address. She feels something igniting inside of her as she takes her finger and tears at the side of the envelope and starts to pull out the single layer of paper.

Hot, angry, heartbreaking tears flood her eyes when she sees the check.

* * *

Castle walks out of the tree line, through his yard and starts to roll his neck, quickly catching his breath. He's really not looking forward to this morning. He's expecting the worst. He doesn't know why he should expect anything other than the worst with her.

But when he cautions a glance up to the street, he sees that her car isn't parked where it usually is. It takes him slightly by surprise, but he shakes it away and dips under the cable of Sasha's lead and quickly makes for the entrance to the house. He can see Sasha's tail jump up in the air through the side window and he chuckles, knowing she saw him coming back and is already waiting at the door for him. She's such a great dog. Best find he's ever made. He loses himself for a moment, somewhat anxious to get back to his dog and his daughter, who's home until the afternoon.

When he rounds the front of the house and grabs onto the railing that leads up to the porch, he hears a pair of tires squeal to a stop behind him. Castle turns around in time to see her slamming the gear and throwing the door open. All he can do is breathe out a sigh as she jumps out of the car and slams the door as hard as she can.

Behind him, Sasha barks loudly from the door. Castle turns around to see Sasha jumping onto the windowsill, still barking at the noise. He watches his dog for a moment as she seems to stop barking and her ears perk up.

Castle turns back around to the woman storming her way through his yard and up to him, an envelope clutched tightly in her hand. "Is this what you think of me?" She demands, shaking the envelope at him.

He breathes out another long, heavy sigh. "Here we go," he mutters.

Beckett, angry and crushed, storms up to him and his half-lidded gaze, shaking the envelope in the air. "What, you think you can just _buy _me off?"

"Beckett," he, against everything telling him to try, attempts.

But she cuts him off. "Just who the hell do you think I am, anyway, Castle?" She demands, leaning forward with a glimmer in her eyes, but a deep, angry furrow in her brow. "What, like I was only ever after your _money!" _She spits at him. "Is this really how low you think of me?" She says in a tight, angry, emotional voice.

With that, Castle gives up trying and just decides to wait her out with a calm, cool expression, letting her blow it all off.

"What, do you think you can just send me a check for five thousand dollars and that will give me what I wanted and I'll leave you alone, is that it?" She demands, angrily shaking the letter at him again. "Is this how you see me, Castle? As some cheap, gold-digging, _tramp!?" _She seethes, balling up the envelope and slamming both her hands into his chest.

Castle falls back a small step when she pushes him, taken completely off guard only for a second as she looks over to him with angry, tear-filled eyes.

Beckett is continuing before he can even decide to push back. "I know this might come as a surprise to you, Castle, but I love you," she says to him, poking him in the chest with a sharp finger, "for _you. _I never _cared _about your money, I never cared about your fame or your cars. I never cared about any of it!" She says, letting her raw emotions seep into her voice, on the verge of breaking down the more the vents. "I only cared about _you_. I never wanted any part of this! So _take _it back!" She sobs, crumpling up the envelope and shoving him in the chest again.

The check falls in a crumpled fall, leaving him to catch it with his forearms. Castle breathes a small sigh and watches her storm back toward her car. "You just love to assume the worst of me, don't you?" He calmly calls back to her.

That stops her. Beckett slows to a stop halfway through his yard and takes a pause before spinning back around to glare at him, hoping he can't see the tracks of her tears.

Castle takes the envelope in one hand and slowly starts toward her. "I suggest to you that you think about the people that love you when going after some very dangerous people and that automatically means I'm just the school's funniest kid... trying to use your life as my own personal jungle gym." He fires back at her.

She can taste sour bile in the back of her throat.

"I get put under the thumb of someone that says he has information on those same people and am told that unless I want you to die in my arms again, I'll keep you away from it... and automatically it means that you can't trust me at all and that I must be working for them." She can tell he's been waiting for his chance to hit her with all of this, even as he's still slowly approaching her with the crumpled envelope in his hand. "You," he points at her, "the person who's traded hundreds of texts and emails with over the years... are shown emails alleging that I not only cheated on you... but killed the mistress to try and cover it up, and automatically I'm not only an adulterer, but I'm a murder also."

"Castle," she tries, but can't find her voice over the clench in her throat.

He talks over her, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head. "I call you... and tell you that we need to talk and _automatically_... it means I'm breaking up with you." He says, right to her face, stopping just a foot away from her, looking her dead in the eye. "You know, Beckett, you have a really funny way of being in love with someone."

She swallows the sob and can't bite back the angry fight rising in her as she grabs the crumpled envelope from him again and waves it at him. "Then what is this, huh?" She demands in a hushed voice.

Castle clenches his jaw and takes the envelope back from her, showing it to her in the air. "This is a royalty check."

Everything drains from her when she hears that for a moment. "Wha..." she attempts, but can't form the words. She shakes her head vigorously and tries again. "Royalties, for what?"

Castle lifts his brow at her obviously. "You're the inspiration of a series of best-selling novels, Kate." He says to her matter-of-factly.

"But..." she tries, still at a loss of words. "I never... we..." she can't make sense of any of it. "Since when did you pay me royalties?" She asks, still not knowing if she can be mad at him or not.

Castle sighs deeply and stares at her for a moment. "Do you really want to know or are you just looking for more ammunition for the next time you yell at me?" He snides.

"Castle..." she says through clenched teeth, trying to contain herself.

With another sigh, he calms himself and softens his gaze to her. "Scott Dunn."

Beckett stops to think to herself for a moment. "The guy who got obsessed with Nikki Heat?"

Castle breathes softly and waves the envelope at her again. "After he bombed your apartment and you came to stay with me... I got to thinking." It's been a long time since she's heard this tone from him. His soft, caring, almost loving tone. If she had it in her, she'd reach up and cup his jaw just before stealing a kiss from him, just because of the tone in his voice alone. "You'd just lost everything and I didn't know how much you had in savings... if any. And I knew you'd never just ask me for a loan. So, after you went upstairs, I got on the phone with Gina and set up a meeting with their accountants to arrange to pay you royalties."

When he takes a pause, Beckett takes the opportunity to gaze into his eyes. They're not as hard and glossy as they were before. She can see something familiar in them.

Castle shakes his head and looks away from her for a moment. "Gina didn't want to go above five percent at first, but I high balled her with nine percent and managed to get you seven and three quarters." He explains casually. "After you left here yesterday, I got on the phone with their accountant in charge of the account and arranged for them to have the account transferred from the bank in New York to the local bank here in town, which will take a few days, but I had them send you a check," he says, showing her the envelope, "so you could get some cash and maybe stop living out of a suitcase and stop driving a rented car." He says, motioning to the rental still parked on the curb. "Since you obviously plan on staying a while."

Beckett feels her throat close, wanting to just hug him. But after a moment, she regains a bit of her senses and shakes her head to herself. "Castle, I don't want any of your money." When all he does is look down to the envelope and starts to pull the check out, she continues. "I never loved you for your money, Castle. You have to know that."

"Not," he starts and shows her the check again, "a single cent... of the money in this account came from my wallet, Beckett." He says pointedly. "And you might have figured that out," he says to her, looking down to the check before showing it to her, his finger pointing to the name on the check itself, "if you had bothered to even read the check... which is in _your _name."

When Beckett sees her name printed along the left side of the check that she'd completely overlooked, she feels every bit of anger fall away from her. She reaches up with a weak hand and takes the check from him, barely having the strength to hold it up. "Castle, I..."

Castle waits for her to continue, but after too long a moment, he stops waiting. "You're so bound and determined to win me back? Why not start trusting me a little bit." He says to her darkly and turns away from her.

When she sees him turn away from her and start up the stairs, she calls out to him. "Castle!"

He stops on the second stair and turns around with an impatient glare.

She meets his eyes again, but doesn't get the soft, loving feeling she got just moments ago. It's replaced with the same cold, impatient, far away look. There's nothing she can say to solve it now. Not in any short period of time. She knows that. Getting down and groveling won't solve anything, going up to him and fighting with him won't solve anything. He's clearly lost faith in what they had. It was always the thing she loved most about him, even before they started seeing each other. Just how much faith he seemed to have in the people he loved.

As the check dangled from her weak fingers, she breathes a relaxing breath and looks over to him. "I love you."

All he does is look away from her for a moment before jumping up the stairs of his porch and opening his front door, catching his dog with his arms as it jumps on him.

* * *

_A/N: Stick with it. That's all I can really say. _


	11. Chapter 11

Castle puts his hands in Sasha's thick fur of her neck and pushes her back into the house with a feigned growl. "Yes, I'm back, chill out." He says to her and lets her back down to the floor, closing the door behind him.

With a quick survey, Alexis is sitting on the far end of the couch with her feet propped up on the edge of the coffee table with her phone to her ear, a textbook open in the middle cushion and her laptop open and sitting on the armrest, and a cup of coffee with a red stirring straw sticking out of the top sitting on the side table next to her. Sasha quickly spins around and presses herself up against her master's legs, looking up to rub the top of her head against his knee, her long tail with that long stringy fur sweeping across the floor.

Alexis looks over to him with a smile and quickly starts to stand up. "Oh, he's right here. I'll let you talk to him now." She says formally. Castle smirks to himself, running his nails through the fur on Sasha's chin and down her neck as she smashes herself against his legs. "Yes, thank you, Professor Collins. Here he is." She says with her bright smile and hands him her cell phone. "It's my English professor." She whispers to him.

Castle smirks and raises his brow, the incident out on his lawn just moments ago seemingly wiped from his memory as he reaches for the phone and keeps the other hand buried in Sasha's thick fur. "Richard Castle," he says into the phone, his tone charming and happy as he watches Alexis smile and cross her arms and Sasha move off his legs and back over to the window.

"Mr. Castle?" A female voice asks him, sounding older. "I'm Dorthy Collins, I'm head of the English department here at Oregon State University." She introduces herself.

"Oh, what can I do for you, professor?" He asks in his usual charming tone, watching from the entrance into the kitchen from the living room. Sasha quickly moves back to the window next to the front door and jumps up on the windowsill to look out front, her ears perking up adorably, making Castle smile and fight the need to go back over and pet her.

"Well, your daughter Alexis is a student of mine in my composition class and when she told me privately who her father was, well," the professor seems to chuckle bashfully, "needless to say, I was a tad overwhelmed."

Castle chuckles as Sasha starts to scratch at the window a bit with her paw, starting to whine in a slight squeak. "Privately?" He asks with a smile. "You kind of make it sound like we're in witness protection, professor."

"Oh, no," the woman waves him off with a chuckle while Castle watches Alexis look over to Sasha, who's still whimpering at the window, and goes over to see what she's whimpering at. "She merely caught me after class and mentioned to me that you were living nearby since I had brought up one of your books in class last week. I must say also, Mr. Castle," he listens, watching as Alexis takes Sasha's ears in her hands and asks her what's going on before looking out the window, "your daughter is a joy to have in class."

Castle chuckles again proudly at his little girl. "That seems to be the consensus of everyone that meets Alexis, actually." He says, using her name so she knows he's talking proudly of her, like he always does.

Alexis looks out the window for a second while she pets Sasha, then back over to her dad with a deep, frightened furrow in her brow. While Castle continues on the phone, his smirk suddenly feels heavy, knowing Alexis saw what Sasha was whimpering at. "Well, Mr. Castle, the reason I wanted to get in touch with you was because I wanted to see if you were interested in coming to the university as a guest lecturer."

Castle's brow pinches as he scoffs to himself. "Me? A guest lecturer?" He asks, not believing her.

"Why, yes, it would be a fabulous opportunity for the students in the English department, I assure you." The professor tells him, trying to convince him.

"Well, I'm not sure what exactly I'd lecture about, to be honest." He says to her and shrugs his shoulders, tossing one foot over the other and leaning against the wall, watching out of the corner of his eye as Alexis pulls Sasha way from the door and back over to her alcove made on the couch. Sasha jumps onto the middle cushion on top of Alexis's textbook and quickly settles down next to her.

"Oh, well, you'd be a great speaker to teach things like oh... plot development, character arcs, themes. We'd pay you, of course."

Castle smiles, shoves off the wall, and quickly makes his way over to the couch and plops down next to Sasha, who stands up to situate herself to lay her head down onto his leg. "I'd love to, but I can't charge you, professor."

"Oh, Mr. Castle, we must give you something for your trouble." She says to him as he runs his fingers backward through Sasha's fur.

"Believe me, Professor," he chuckles, "if you ask Alexis, getting me out of the house will be payment enough." He says, hoping to get a smile out of his daughter. Instead, all he gets is the same worrying furrow in her brow.

"Well, that's very generous of you, Mr. Castle. Shall we say... this Wednesday at nine AM in the auditorium?"

Castle smiles, "I'll be there."

"Fantastic, I'll be sure to let Alexis know. And really, Mr. Castle, it will be a pleasure hearing your insight." The professor says to him happily.

"The pleasure will be all mine, professor." Castle says back, and after a farewell, he ends the call and hands the phone back to Alexis. "Well," he starts in a braggadocious tone, "looks like I'm wanted for more than my good looks, after all."

Alexis purses her lips as she takes her phone back. "You know, Dad, I thought it would take you a little more convincing than that."

"Oh, come on," he says with a shrug as he uses one hand to scratch Sasha's head that lays across his leg, "the closest thing to this I ever got is being a chaperone on your school field trips."

"Just," Alexis continues and picks up her mug, "please don't embarrass me like you did back then, okay?"

"Embarrass? When did I embarrass you?" He challenges her.

"Sixth grade?" She challenges him. "Natural history museum?"

"Hey,' he lifts his finger to her, "that wasn't my fault. That tour guide was borderline incompetent."

"Dad," She almost whines.

He just smiles reassuringly and lifts his hand out of the thick fur on the back of Sasha's neck. "I won't embarrass you, pumpkin. I promise."

Alexis nods with a heavy smile as he goes back to petting his dog, and a thick silence soon falls between them. "Dad," she says with a heavy tone. He looks over to her casually, "that was Beckett out front."

He looks over to her for a moment before shrugging his shoulders. "Yeah," he says offhandedly, looking back down to Sasha as he pets her, "yeah, she said she's going to be coming by every morning."

Alexis sits up on the couch, turning toward him. Sasha lifts her head off his thigh at the movement. "Dad," she challenges him.

He looks over to her. "What?" He asks, as if he did something wrong.

"Were you not going to tell me about this?"

He shrugs his shoulders again. "I didn't think it was that important." He says and massages Sasha's ears, knowing he's getting a look from her. When he looks back over, Alexis is sending him an obvious glare. He sighs and deadpans a stare out into nowhere. "Alexis, I told you before." He smiles. "I've moved on, okay? You don't have to worry about me."

Alexis sighs and crosses her legs on the couch, turning toward him. "Dad," she starts in a small voice, "I'm a big girl now. You don't have to pretend for my sake anymore."

Castle looks over to her with a pinch in his brow. "I'm not pretending, Alexis." He defends himself. "Beckett can come over for as long as she wants, but that won't change what happened. So you don't have to worry, okay?" He asks her, honestly worried about how she's handling it. "Like I said, pumpkin, the woman I fell in love with in New York was just a figment of my wild imagination. Nothing more, okay?"

"Yeah, Dad," she says with a meager shrug of her shoulders. "But a figment of your imagination or not, you still fell in love."

Like an obstinant child or the same man that would get his words tossed back at him by his partner back in New York, Castle lids his gaze and looks away from her. It used to drive him crazy when she'd do that to him.

"And honestly..." she chuckles nervously, "I'd rather you be honest about that and just face up to it."

Castle shakes his head and puts his hand back into Sasha's fur, looking down to her with a sigh. "I'm happy out here, Alexis." He says to her. "And..." he shakes his head, "I can't really force her to stop coming by but... nothing she can say will change what happened. If anything," he says with another shrug, "the more she's told me, the more she lies to me. And whether that's to spare my feelings or not," he thinks out loud, "it still doesn't really negate the fact that she can't trust me with the truth. So..." he trails off.

Alexis nods and puts her hand into Sasha's fur on the base of her tail. "So, I take it she said something that wasn't true, then?"

Castle nods, debating telling his daughter. "She said that she couldn't go back to the NYPD because of a budget freeze. So I called the mayor to try and get them to work around it to get her back on the Force, but-"

"He..." she talks ahead of him, "said there wasn't one."

"Right," he nods. "So... I don't know why she'd lie to me about that but... if there was an opening in the NYPD and she didn't take it..." Maybe she chose him over her job after all.

After a long moment between them, Alexis speaks up. "Dad?"

He looks up to her but dismisses her with a shake of his head. "Doesn't really matter, she lied to me anyway." He says and continues to pet Sasha.

Alexis nods and looks back over to him, "Are you sure you'll be alright?" She asks, her voice small and worried.

Castle smiles, "I'm sure, pumpkin."

* * *

It's the next morning, Beckett is pulling up in her car, feeling a soft, courageous determination in her heart. His coffee is in the cupholder next to her's, but she went on ahead of him and started at her's already. Not that he's been actually taking his.

She puts the car in park and hears a dog bark from his yard. She looks out the window and sees Castle's dog on the lead that goes between a Birch and an oak tree in his yard. The dog keeps barking at her car as she grabs her coffee from the cupholder and takes a sip. She looks at the tree line and then at the entrance to his house, then back over to his dog, who's still barking. She unbuckles her seatbelt and pushes open the door, then grabs his cup from the other holder and climbs out. Once she steps out onto the curb with the two cups in her hands, the dog stops barking and its ears perk up.

Beckett chuckles when she sees the dog perks its ears up and starts wagging its long, stringy-haired tail. It's a cute dog, anyway. She closes the door to her Impala with her foot and goes over to lean against the hood to wait for him. She takes another small sip of her coffee and sets his cup down on the hood. With a sigh, she shoves her hand into her pocket, her fingers finding the engagement ring and she quickly starts to fiddle with it. She really shouldn't have this. He should be the one giving it to her.

After a minute or so of fiddling with the ring, she hears the dog let out a small, high-pitched bark in her direction. Beckett flicks her eyes over and sees the dog looking at her with its ears perked up still. When the dog sees her look at it, the dog's jowls flop with another small bark before laying down in the grass. Beckett smiles and lowers her head, telling the dog it has her attention. When she does, the dog jumps up excited and lowers its front legs to the ground, starting to bounce in place. Beckett chuckles to herself as she watches it.

If she didn't feel it would set him off, she would go over and play with it. She loves dogs, but this one is obviously Castle's. She doesn't want to set him off by invading his space and going over and annoying his dog just because she felt like it. She may be invading his place now just by showing up, but until she sees him, the curb is as far as she feels comfortable going.

With another few sips of her coffee over another few minutes, she sees the dog spin around from looking at her and around to the trees, where Castle is striding out in his usual workout clothes, his muscles glistening as they do every morning. The dog jumps up on its hind legs when Castle comes out of the trees and Beckett can hear it whimpering from here.

"Yes," Castle says, raising his hand to Sasha, "yes, I missed you too. Calm down." He says, his breath still a bit hard as he knees down to her to unhook her from the lead. "Yes, I know it's been forever," he says to her as Sasha starts licking the side of his head. "Yes, I get it." Castle finds the hook buried in her thick fur and unhooks it.

Once Sasha knows she's free, she darts across the yard as fast as she can toward her. "Sash-" Castle grabs for her but misses by a few feet and quickly stands up to call after her. "Sasha!" He hollers.

Beckett smiles as Sasha runs at full speed toward her, only slowing down a few feet away from her. "Hey, you," Beckett softly coos as Sasha reaches her snout over to her to test Beckett out for a moment. Beckett kneels down and reaches her hand out to her and it only takes a few sniffs of Beckett's fingertips for Sasha to accept her excitedly and push herself into her.

Beckett laughs as Sasha smashes her side into her, lifting her head up to try and reach Beckett, who already has her arms wrapped around her, both hands holding a cup of coffee. Sasha whimpers again and wiggles around inside of Beckett's arms excitedly.

Beckett chuckles as she Sasha sits down at her feet and laps her tongue across her cheek. "Oh!" Beckett says happily. "Hey," She says with a smile as Sasha continues to seemingly go crazy for Beckett's attention, moving around and smashing her side against Beckett's knees while she kneels down to give her attention.

Castle sighs heavily and is slowly making his way over to them. He can feel a smile putting up a fight underneath the armor he has on, watching his dog fawn all over her. "Sorry about this." He sighs a few feet away from them.

Beckett laughs when Sasha rolls onto her back. She moves her occupied hand to pet her but stops when she sees she's still holding a cup of coffee.

"Oh, here," Castle says out of instinct and takes it from her. Freeing up her hand for her, Beckett starts scratching Sasha's stomach and sets her other cup on the curb to pet her head.

"She's adorable," Beckett coos as she loves on Sasha, who's obviously loving the attention. "You adopt her?" She asks him with a smile, looking up to him.

"Sort of," he smiles. Beckett catches his smile as he looks down to his dog on the ground at her feet. His soft smirk that she loved kissing off his face makes her heart skip a beat, almost violently, when she sees it. "A couple weeks after I moved out here, it was raining one morning, and I found her under a bench on the bank of the lake while I was running."

"Aww," Beckett coos, her brow arching in sadness as she looks back down to Sasha. She pets her ears softly and Sasha mewls her head into her palm.

"She was cold and wet but she latched onto me pretty quickly. At first, I thought she was a stray, but I noticed she'd been groomed recently." He explains as Beckett looks back up to him. "So, after I dried her off, I put her in my car and drove her around to the local groomers until I found someone that recognized her. They gave me an address to a farm about..." he trails off, looking down the street the way that leads away from town, "five miles out of town. I took her down there and the guy said that he just got tired of her running away and he just... didn't want her anymore."

Feeling sad again, Beckett looks down to the dog still laying splayed out at her feet, running her hand up and down her stomach.

"So," he smiles and kneels down next to her, putting his hand roughly in Sasha's ears, "I took her in."

Beckett smiles at him as he loves on his dog, her heart fluttering wildly at the sight of the man she fell head over heels for. The softer, caring, loving, big-hearted man she loves that's in front of her now, kneeling down and loving on a dog that he rescued from an owner that didn't want her anymore. She can feel her hand telling her to reach up to his jaw and pull him into her. Once she gets the thought, she has to fight herself to keep from doing it.

"Still a big softie, huh?" She asks in a joking tone and a smile.

Castle is brought back to the reality at hand by her comment and the soft smile vanishes off his face.

But Beckett is quick to try and save it, looking back down to Sasha. "So, she uh..." she says, petting her ribcage, "she always this welcoming of strangers?"

Castle raises his brow and shakes his head. "No, it uh..." he says, shrugging his shoulders. "It usually depends on the person really."

Beckett fights her smile and looks back up to him. "She must have pretty good judgment, then."

"Well, she did choose _me, _so..." he smirks to himself, throwing out the first quip he could think of. After that, they fall into silence and Beckett stands up once Castle gives her the signal while Sasha stays laying down in the grass between them. "I uh..." he starts, looking at Beckett's grey Chevy Impala sedan, "I take it you cashed the check."

Beckett smiles calmly and nods, giving him a moment before giving her answer. "Thank you." She says in as honest a tone as she can give him without it sounding fake. Once he gives her his eyes, she continues. "You didn't have to do that, but... I just want you to know how much it helped and... however uncomfortable it makes me feel using your money."

He takes in a breath to fight it, but bites it back, not seeing any point in it. It's not his money. If anything, she should feel better knowing it's technically coming out of Gina's pocket and not his.

"But um..." she starts up again after a moment, "now that you're here, I should..." she hesitantly says and reaches into the pocket of her jacket, "I should probably give this back to you."

When Castle looks down to the engagement ring she pulls from her pocket, his throat closes with impatience. He waits until she offers it up to him to raise his hand. "I bought it for you, Beckett. It's yours."

"Castle," she nervously chuckles, "this is an engagement ring." She states with a purposeful tone. "I can't keep this."

"Because you would've said no?" He lets slip.

Beckett grits her teeth. "I can't keep this because we aren't engaged, Rick." She says, but he doesn't respond other than looking away from her and throwing on the same stone-faced expression he's had for the past week. "And I already told you that I would've said yes."

"Yeah, well," he starts over her, "I don't want it anymore." He looks up to her again. "So... same goes for the ring as the money, you can do whatever you want with it. It's yours." He says and looks down to Sasha, who's still laying contently by his feet. "Come on." He calls and nods his head toward the house.

Sasha stands up and follows him up the stairs and through the door. She blinks hotly, but shakes away the emotion and sets her cup down on the hood and pulls her necklace out from underneath her shirt and unhooks the clasp. She breathes out an emotion-ladden breath and puts the end of the chain through the band and carefully slides the diamond band down the chain to rest against her mother's ring.

* * *

Inside, Castle closes the door behind him and Sasha slowly walks over and claims her usual spot in the middle of the couch.

On a heavy sigh, Castle moves over to sit down next to her. When he does, it isn't until now that he has a chance to look at the cup in his hand.

_Every morning, I bring you a cup of coffee just to see a smile on your face. _His words ring in his head, his heart crawling with the same painful feeling it did that afternoon. When Sasha breaks him out of it by resting her head down on his thigh, Castle sighs and puts his hand in her fur. "You like her, huh?"

Sasha only responds by a big breath out as she falls asleep on his leg. Castle then looks over to the cup in his hand.

"Just try not to get too attached, okay?" He tells her, setting the cup down on the other end of the side table. "It'll just break your heart."


	12. Chapter 12

It's still bright, warm, and sunny in Crestfield as Beckett steps out of her Impala and onto the sidewalk outside the coffee shop. She always heard that the northwest was always gloomy, always raining and cloudy. But Crestfield is remarkably temperate, especially for it being mid-March. A part of her is still adjusting to life in a small town, not having to watch for foot traffic as she steps out of her car, not having to anticipate traffic, deal with the smells, the rodents and the vermin. There was so much of just living in Manhattan that she realizes she doesn't have to deal with anymore.

And as the days have started to go by, it's started to grow on her like Kudzu. She's still living out of a half-unpacked suitcase in a Holiday Inn on the outskirts of town, right next to the on-ramp of a major free-way leading toward Corvallis, still has made no attempt to settle down here in town, is still getting stone-walled by the man she loves, her only reason for being here, but the climate and the air and the feeling as she steps out onto the sidewalk alone is enough to make the small smile that perks up the corners of her lips feel natural.

Taking in a large breath and pushing the strand of hair blowing in her face behind her ear, she looks up through the glass doors and sees Beth and Barbra, the two short-haired blondes, both standing at the tablet they use for a register, seeming as if they're arguing over something to themselves. The shop isn't all that crowded, as it usually is with the time Beckett times her visits. They're both always nice to her. Almost to the point of being a bit off-putting, but it's probably just her.

Beckett steps up the stone steps and pulls open the door, sending a friendly smile to the two women behind the counter as she reaches for her wallet. The two look up to her with a bit of a stunned silence, as if they're both looking at a stranger. Being a detective, former one anyway, she catches the air in the shop quickly.

Beckett looks between the two as Barbra gives her a forced smile and moves over to the other end of the counter to start her usual order. "Hey, Beth," Beckett says with a small smile and steps up to the register.

Beth looks over to her under the veil of her short blonde hair. "Hey... Kate," she says almost nervously.

She pulls out her wallet and flicks her eyes between the two women, eyeing them to read to the situation. She can see Barbra stare at her over the top of the espresso machine, only looking down for a second when she sees she's been caught. When Barbra starts heating the milk for her order, Beckett looks back over to Beth, who's just finished punching in her usual order.

"Something wrong?" She finally asks after pulling out a twenty from her wallet.

"Hmm?" Beth hums, trying to feign as if Beckett didn't catch the looks. When she meets her eyes, Beckett raises her brow, keeping her smile in place to avoid sending the situation downward. "Oh," she says, waving at her, "no, it's nothing." She smiles.

Beckett nods, deciding in the moment that if it was important, she'd either catch onto it or they'd tell her. Beth and Barbra have always seemed the type to be upfront about things, at least from a customer-provider standpoint. Beckett looks down to the floor as she pushes her wallet back down into her back pocket. "Hope you don't mind breaking a twenty," she says with a smile as she goes to hand her the money.

Once Beckett looks back up, she catches Beth lifting the top half of a magazine off the counter in front of her, and looking over to her as if she's inspecting her. The moment Beckett looks up, Beth sets the magazine down and grabs the cash as nonchalantly as she can, failing miserably. "Yes, not at all." She says the wrong words.

Beckett gives her a moment and waits her out, wanting to catch her mind in the middle of a task before it has time to come up with a lie, waiting for her to open the register and to start counting out her change. When she sees Beth grab a ten, she swoops in. "You know, Beth, I was a detective, right?"

It seems to work as Beth jerks her hand in the wrong direction, making her coins scatter onto the floor. With a nervous chuckle, Beth smiles as she goes down to pick up the change. "I-I'm..." she pants, "I'm sorry."

Beckett glances over the counter and takes a quick look at the magazine she was trying to not get caught looking at, but only has time to catch sight of a picture of Castle taking up a full half a page, clad in a tan flannel shirt, jeans, and sunglasses, a green reusable grocery bag in one hand, the grey t-shirt he has on underneath blowing against the wind to outline the definitive lines of his muscles. Her brow pinches in a stomach-churning curiosity, and she only has a few seconds to correct herself before Beth makes it back up to the counter.

With a wide, nervous smile, Beth hands her the change, leaving Beckett to put three dollars and the coins into the tip jar. Another thick wall of silence falls over the three of them as Barbra makes as little noise as she prepares the second item on Beckett's usual order. Another minute or so goes by before Beth sits back in the stool and pulls the magazine up to her face, trying not to get noticed as she flicks her eyes from the page and back to her.

Beckett looks up to Beth again, raising her brow in question and smiling again. "Interesting article?" Beckett challenges her finally.

Beth smiles nervously and shakes her head, looking back down to the page again. "Oh, just..." she draws out, "mindless gossip."

Beckett nods, mostly agreeing. "Well, you seem awfully concerned over a supermarket tabloid, Beth." Beckett challenges again. "And you're trying pretty hard to make it seem like I'm not supposed to notice you keep staring at me."

"Oh, it's _nothing,"_ Beth says, waving her hand at her in a wise motion. "It's just a wild coincidence, that's all." She shrugs her shoulders.

"What's a wild coincidence?" She asks in a softer, more curious tone.

"Do you know Richard Castle?" Barbra seems to spit out impatiently from behind the espresso machine.

"Barbra!" Beth seethes, while Beckett's body is frozen in place, having whipped her eyes around to her. "I thought we agreed we wouldn't bring it up!" Beth angrily mutters through clenched teeth as she storms over to her sister. After a moment, Beth forces a smile over to her, raising her hand and pushing her sister a foot or two. Beckett can't make out what they're saying after that, but she's quick to lean over the register and take a closer look at the magazine, reading the headline in the top left-hand corner. _What caused the writer to disappear and where he is now REVEALED! _The last word is underlined.

Beth looking between her and the magazine, them asking if she knows him... it only takes a second for Beckett's intuition to piece things together. They wrote about her.

She hardens herself as Beth starts to make her way back around the counter to the register. "So sorry about that, Kate."

As off-putting as it is to hear people call her Kate, she forces a smile and gives her a dismissive nod. "It's okay," she lies, "and um..." she swallows and looks back up to Barbra, "no, I don't know who that is." She blatantly lies.

She can see Beth give her a nod, "Really?" She asks in a small, frightened voice. Beckett gives her another dismissive smile. "Because," she chuckles and reaches for the magazine, flopping it open to a page near the beginning, "it's just, well..." she says, showing her the article in the magazine, "you look just like... well..."

The first thing she sees is a picture of her in her dress uniform... from Montgomery's funeral. That was right before she was shot. The story made national headlines. The picture is shown in a small square on the next page after the picture of him along the left side. They dug... and they found out about them. "Hmm..." she hums, trying to act like it's not tearing her apart and looks back down, digging out her phone from her front pocket.

"I mean," Beth chuckles again, taking the magazine back and starting to skim through it, "a police detective, working in New York, shadowed by Richard Castle for his mystery novels, initials 'KB'," the dedications... she falls in love with him more and more every time she reads them. "Richard Castle living in town... you... well, it's just coincidence."

"Right," Beckett says, not looking up from checking her email.

"It uh..." Beth nervously chuckles again, "it even says she quit the NYPD because she got some of his money somehow... well, allegedly, it says."

It's with that that Beckett snaps. "I never cared about that."

Once it leaves her mouth, looking at the wide-eyed look she's receiving from Beth, she knows her secrets out... probably to the whole town.

Beckett just nods to herself and tries to harden herself, trying not to think of just how many people think she's just another gold-digging tramp that seduced and bedded him for what she could get out of it. She loved him for him. Up until now, her knowing that was all that really mattered. "I never cared about any of that." She tells them, not feeling confident. "Only him."

Expecting to get bombarded with questions, Beckett looks back down to the blank screen of her phone for a second, shoring up her armor as best she can. "Um..." Barbra says from the side, "here you go."

With a forced smile, Beckett grabs the cups from her and leaves.

* * *

She pulls to a stop outside his house at her usual time, grabs the two cups from the cupholders, taking a tired sip of her own, and pushes open the door, hearing Sasha let out a loud bark from the yard.

She looks up and sees Sasha attached to her lead again, ears already perked up eagerly and tail wagging excitedly. The outside world forgotten for now, she smiles and lets a small bit of joy warm her as Sasha paces back and forth at the end of her lead. She got attached to the long-haired German Shepard pretty quickly over those few minutes yesterday. She couldn't help it even brought them a bit closer. As Sasha barks in anticipation of Beckett loving on her again, Beckett starts to lean back against the hood of her Impala before catching sight of something underneath the oak tree that wasn't there before.

A set of patio furniture, a set of two metal armchairs, painted green, and a small circular table.

She knows him. And when she sees the two chairs sitting nestled under the tree, Sasha waiting for her, it almost brings her eyes flooding with tears. With a watery smile, Beckett walks across the yard, smiling brightly at Sasha as she approaches her. "Hey, Sasha," she emotionally coos as she sets the cups down on the table and takes a seat in the chair closest to her car. "Hey, you," she says as Sasha jumps up into her lap.

Beckett spends a few minutes with her fingers tangled in Sasha's thick fur, Sasha loving the attention as she sits in the grass with her head lying in the crease of her legs.

"Think I'm getting through to him?" She asks her, massaging her thick ears. "Huh?"

Sasha doesn't respond aside from readjusting her head on her leg when she pulls her hand away for a second. It's another few minutes and another few sips from her coffee before Castle appears at the tree line, sporting a white sleeveless t-shirt and black gym pants, a large sweat stain on the chest of his shirt. Sasha hears him coming and immediately goes to the other end of her lead to greet him. Still out of breath, he lifts his hand up to his dog. "Yes," he pants, "I missed you too." He tells her, ruffling her ears around.

She waits with her cup sitting in her hands meagerly until he looks up to her. "Hope you don't mind." She tells him with a smile, shrugging her shoulders.

Castle sniffs and pinches the end of his nose, flicking a bead of sweat away. "No, it was uh..." he pants again, still catching his breath, "just sitting in the garage." He tells her, looking up to the garage and planting his hands on his hips. He must have really pushed himself this morning. She can still see beads of sweat running down his biceps and his neck. She's never craved him on this primal of a level before. She always found him sexy and attractive, but this is a new feeling between them. She's ogling him. "Alexis wanted a place to study that wasn't the couch and her room." He shrugs and takes the seat across the table from her, facing the house.

Sasha moves over to him, putting herself between his spread legs.

Beckett nods to herself and doesn't know how to begin. She can feel an ease in the usual tension between them. But isn't sure how delicate it is. She takes a chance and turns to look over to him, seeing he's playing with Sasha's ears. "You seem happy this morning." She points out, seeing his soft smirk playing across his mouth as he pets Sasha.

Once she points it out, Castle is quick to correct himself in front of her, pursing his lips and shaking his head, leaning forward on his knees and letting Sasha whap her tongue up his face. He decides not to respond, not thinking of anything that wouldn't give her the wrong idea.

She notices the change in his demeanor when it happens, the way his expression hardens. "So...' she begins in a tight voice, looking down to the lid of her cup, "I'm uh..." she begins hesitantly, "I'm looking for a place."

It doesn't get an answer out of him. No matter her intentions when she lied to him, bottom line, she can't seem to trust him with the truth, no matter what it's regarding.

"There are some complexes out by Corvallis... pretty affordable." She starts with some small, one-sided small talk. "Didn't really plan on moving out that far, but..." she chuckles, almost sadly, "it's better than the Holiday Inn I'm staying in now."

She eyes him for a response for a moment, but after too long of a wait, with him just sitting absentmindedly running his fingers through the fur on Sasha's neck, she nods to herself and resolves that he's not talking.

"You didn't think I'd still be here, did you?" She asks him, her tone shifting from feigned friendship to serious.

"You looking for me to answer that honestly?" He snides.

"Castle," she shakes her head, her voice shaking, but resembling an emotional chuckle when he hits her ears, "I don't know how long it will take to convince you that I really loved you but I'll be here until it happens."

All Castle does is nod, mostly to himself, and waits her out for a moment. It's another minute of complete silence, nothing but the water splashing against the shore of the lake in the distance, before Sasha moves over to Beckett and lays her head down on her thigh. She smiles to herself and starts to pet her ears again. "I'm happy out here, Beckett." He says matter-of-factly.

She looks up to him, seeing his looking toward her out of the corner of his eye. "I'm glad," she says, as if he was expecting her to answer differently. "I like it out here too, Castle."

Castle grits his teeth and grimaces, shaking his head before he turns to look toward the woods. She's not getting it. It's probably his fault, at least some of it. He doesn't want to be direct with her and just say it. Maybe a part of him wants to see how long he can test himself against her before snapping, see how thick and fool-proof his defenses have become over these nine months. On a hard sigh, he shakes his head again, "Argyle street."

Beckett looks back over to him after taking a break from obviously carefully studying him. "Argyle street?" She parrots back.

"Three miles up,' he says, looking down the street heading back into town and pointing, "hang a left for another five miles, turn right... sixth house on the right."

Beckett shakes her head to herself, trying to fill in the blanks. "What?" She breathes, a smile betraying the tenseness of the situation.

"You plan on staying?" He shoots over to her, raising his brow at her. "There's a house on Argyle Street that's for rent." He tells her plainly. "Three bedroom, two and a half bath, full kitchen... one car garage."

She's fighting her face-engulfing smile as best she can, but knows she's losing. "You really want me living that close?" She jokes with him, her voice low and husky.

"This is Oregon, Beckett." He rolls his eyes. "It's not like you can take the subway here."

She chuckles, "Still," she shrugs, "just feels weird. I mean, I was weird enough leasing a car with your money, Castle. I can't imagine how weird it's going to feel renting a house with it."

"Yeah, well," he sighs as he pushes up on his knees and stands up, "you weren't even supposed to know about it, so-" he tries to end the conversation, quickly patting Sasha on the back to get her attention.

"Wait," Beckett says, standing up to go after him, "what?"

Castle, in no mood to deal with her nagging it out of him, stops and turns around. "You think I didn't know how you'd react when I had them send you that check?" He says to her. "Telling you about the royalty payments was a last resort, Beckett. And I told you already, none of it is my money. If it makes you feel any less weird, you're actually taking money away from Gina. It'd make me sleep better at night." He jokes and starts to lean down to unhook Sasha from her lead.

She tries to piece together his words as quickly as she can before Sasha is unhooked from her lead. "Last resort?" She asks herself. "Wait, who else did you call?" She panics as he's standing back up from attending to his dog.

"The mayor," he says in a hard, angry tone. Her throat closes. "Since you said the NYPD was on a budget freeze, I called him to see if a donation was enough to get you back on the force."

He knows. The mayor has to know about her being blacklisted. He knows everything. He's going to keep pressing her. He's going to know everything.

Castle just sighs and shakes his head. "Imagine my surprise when he told me that there wasn't one." He says in a sad voice. "So, I don't know why it's that much of a shock... finding out that you lied to me about trying to get back on the NYPD." Beckett feels her lungs being squeezed. "What, did you think I'd think less of you or something?"

When he rhetorically asks her that question, she feels her brow pinch.

"I've always known you never trusted me with the truth, Kate, but... I don't know why you thought I'd think less of you for not taking an opening at the NYPD when they had one and going after me instead." He shrugs his shoulders.

She's not sure if the pain in her chest is fear or her heart shattering into pieces.

"Bottom line is you just couldn't tell me the truth. Surprises never end." He says and leans down, unhooks Sasha from her lead, and corrals her into the house.

* * *

_A/N: I was going to add another character into the story, but it would have cut into the next chapter. Someone to balance things out more. Can you guess who it is? ;)_


	13. Chapter 13

Stepping out of the shower, she pulls a purple long-sleeved shirt over herself and pulls her wet, stringy hair out of the seam. She didn't need a shower, but it's a good way to waste away thirty minutes of the day. A way to zone out completely and shut out the nagging strings of constant thought that plague her when she's just watching TV, infinite scrolling her phone, or sitting in the coffee shop doing the same thing.

Beckett shakes out her wet hair and pads across the motel room, over to her suitcase sitting open on the table next to the TV, along with an open styrofoam box from her dinner of an ill-prepared cheeseburger from one of the chain restaurants nearby that have customer pick-up. The fries are stale, but they were close to getting there anyway when she got them. It's hard to stay motivated during the day, to stay at it and be confident that she'll get him back when all she's doing is sitting around waiting for the next morning to come for her next opportunity to try and scale the Berlin Wall he built around his heart.

Padding over to her suitcase, she lazily stops in front of it and finds his tan flannel sitting nestled safely in the top left corner, mostly untouched since she took it from his drawer.

She has to fight the temptation to slip it on herself every single night, just to feel some part of him around her when she closes her eyes. She doesn't want it to lose any part of him, afraid she'll act like a leech and just turn it into any old shirt, instead of his. With a shaky sigh, Beckett takes the soft, worn, warm fabric in her fingers and pulls it out from between a pair of jeans and holds it tenderly in her palms, turning around to lean back against the edge of the table.

It only takes a moment for her to close her eyes and press the inside of the shirt to her nose, inhaling the scent the hint of his cologne and the natural scent still have. Old book pages, hardwood, a crisp scotch, and just a hint of her favorite wine that she left on him. She hates herself she can't remember the night he took this shirt off and put it in his drawer. There were so many nights they stripped each other bare, he could have left this shirt in his drawer after any one of them.

Giving him that drawer was such a big step. Not just for them, but for her. Giving him a place of his own in her sanctuary, her place to go for privacy, where she could truly be herself and didn't have to pretend for anyone. A small, yet huge gesture for her to make to show him that what they had wasn't a fling, or that they were just boyfriend and girlfriend like some high school romance, or that she was ready for him to be out of her life at a moments notice like she was with everyone else, always having one foot out the door.

Giving him that drawer was a way to show him that he was it for her, that she wanted him to be it for her, that she was on board one hundred percent with their relationship, that he had a real, meaningful place in her life. She always thought that for him, that would be the best part of the gift. After everything that happened with his gift and the mix up with Gates, she thought the best gift she could give him was a sign that she was in it with both feet for him.

How did it all go so wrong so quickly?

After a minute, she pulls the shirt from her face and starts to fold it back up. As she shakes out the fabric as carefully as she can, a knock comes wrapping on her door.

She doesn't know anybody here. She didn't order anything. She already paid for the room for another day. And her back-up pice is still in a lockbox in her storage unit in New York. Her mind flips a switch and she's sneaking over to the window where the curtains are pulled closed, moving over to the wall and peaking outside in as small a motion as she can manage to see who's knocking.

When she sees who's outside, looking up and down the doors of the motel rooms, then back around to her Impala parked right outside, her heart warms and she feels a smile form on her face. She jumps over to the door and pulls the locks off and whips it open as quickly as she can. "Dad!"

Jim's eyes whip around over his shoulder after he had turned back to head toward the check-in counter, and seem to light up. "Hey, sweetie," he softly exclaims and extends his arms.

Beckett smiles brightly and feels genuinely happy for the first time in what feels like a lifetime and throws her arms around her father's neck. When he puts his arms around her and hugs her, she can almost feel her eyes burn. It's the kind of love and affection she can only get from him, the kind of safety and comfort she can only ever get from her dad, the kind of acceptance and nurturing she can only get from her dad.

It isn't until he has his arms around her that she realizes just how much she needs all of that right now.

"Oh..." Jim sighs softly as he pets her back and pushes her back and smiles at her, "How've you been, Katie?"

"Dad," she chuckles, ignoring his question. "What are you doing out here?"

Jim just smiles and rubs his daughter's arm. "Why don't we get some coffee and talk about it."

* * *

Kate whips open the door to the coffee shop, still stunned. "Dad, I thought you were kidding."

Jim just smirks softly, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans as he steps up the steps and through the door she holds open for him. "Katie, I'm in my sixties. Why would I be kidding about retiring?"

She smiles happily, overjoyed that for the first time in a really long time she doesn't have to force a smile like this one, and steps up to the counter. "Hey, Beth."

"Hey, Kate!" Beth greets her happily, looking over to her dad. "Another newcomer in town?" She asks, smiling over to her father.

Kate smiles and steps off to the side, "Beth, this is my father, Jim."

Beth's smile brightens across her face as she reaches over the counter to shake her dad's hand. They exchange pleasantries for a moment before Jim hangs his hand from his pocket again.

"Should I get your usual?" She asks her, fingers already poking the touchpad of the register.

"Actually, just two coffees will be fine this time." She says. When Beth smiles and gives her a nod, looking down to the register, Kate looks over to Barbra and points over to a table near the right side of the shop in front of a window out into the brick alleyway between the buildings. Barbra nods and waves for her to go and sit down.

"So," Jim starts as he takes a seat across from her, "how've you been, sweetie?" He asks her and folds his hands together.

She mirrors him and looks down to the table. She knows he's eyeing her for a real answer. After a childhood like hers, she knows he's gotten a sixth sense and can pull her lies out of her. She can be neutral, but she can't lie. "Rick isn't exactly making it easy." She says in a low voice, not wanting to let Beth and Barbra know anything just because she can't control the volume of her own voice.

Jim chuckles and shakes his head a bit. "Katie, I didn't ask how Rick was doing." He tells her, gaining her eyes. "I asked how you were doing."

Kate nods and takes a deep breath to relax herself as Barbra sets two black mugs with green handles down in front of them. "It's been difficult." She admits, folding the mug in her hands. "Finding out that he wanted us to get married broke me pretty hard." She says in as steady a voice as she can give him, reaching up to her neck to pull the chain of her necklace out, taking hold of the engagement ring and looking down to the sparkle of the diamonds again.

Jim looks down to the ring in her fingers, "He gave you the ring?" He asks.

She nods, not looking away. "He tossed it at me when I told him I thought he was breaking up with me. I tried giving it back to him but he said that he didn't want it."

Jim reaches over the table and takes the ring from her, examining it. "Hmm..." he hums softly, "not as extravagant as something I would have expected from Rick, to be honest."

She smiles brightly and nods, "No, it's... it's very uh..." she trails off, not finding the right words.

"Very you?" He says for her.

She nods, taking the ring back. She has a hard time thinking that he didn't just go to a jewelry store and randomly pick something out to give to her. When it came to things like this, Castle was always more thoughtful and put as much real effort into it as he could. After a moment of reflection, she slips the ring back underneath her shirt. "Anyway, I've been trying to get him to work things out with me. I've told him that I'm not going anywhere and that I'm here until he takes me back..." she explains, looking down to the coffee, "and that I love him. But he still seems like he wants nothing to do with me."

Jim gives her a moment before pressing further. "Have you told him about your job in DC?"

Kate can only swallow thickly over her nerves and keep her eyes glued to her coffee.

"Oh, Katie..." Jim sighs.

"Dad, I can't." She says in a soiled voice, defending herself. When he looks back up to her, she can tell he's waiting for her rebuttal just as an excuse to let her have it just like he did when she was a teenager. "It's more complicated than just me telling him the truth." She tells him in a hushed voice. "I'm under _strict _orders not to tell anyone about what happened. I could spend the rest of my life in federal lockup for even mentioning it to you."

"Why do I feel like you're making up excuses, Katie?" Jim fires back at her.

"Dad," she looks at him seriously, lowering her voice even more "what I did... I'm at risk even talking about it _now." _

Jim chuckles, not believing her. "Come on, Kate. It's not like they're listening to us." When all she does is stare back at him with a stone-faced expression with her lips in a thin line, he lowers his gaze. "Be serious, Kate."

"They have ways, Dad." She warns him, her voice barely above a whisper. "I've used them before."

Jim breathes a sigh and nods. "Okay," he says, lifting his brow. "Then tell him as much of the truth as you can."

"Dad," she shakes her head.

"Katie," he stops her seriously, "I understand what he meant to you. But ask yourself why he's shutting you out."

She swallows thickly again, deciding to take a long sip of her coffee, draining a quarter of it in the span of a few sips. "Because he doesn't love me anymore?" She throws out, hoping it's the answer he's looking for.

Jim softens his eyes toward her, conveying understanding. "Because he doesn't trust you not to hurt him again." When he tells her that, she feels her throat close and her heart ache painfully. Her eyes drift shut and she cranes her neck. "Katie, you can't earn that kind of trust back by lying to him."

"Dad," she tries again, "he thinks I didn't take a job in the NYPD because I wanted to be with him. He thinks that I lied to him because I was worried about how he'd see me if I told him I passed up a job for him. If I tell him the truth..." she says with a closed throat, "that I was fired... and that I wasn't allowed back at the NYPD... I know that he'll think I see him as my last choice and I'll never get him back." She tells him, finally admitting out loud why she can't be as honest as he can be with him. "And then I really have lost everything."

Jim looks over to his daughter, breathing a small breath and giving her a nod. "Katie..." he starts, "if you want what the two of you had back, being honest with him is a risk you'll have to take."

Kate nods, reaching up to clutch her necklace through her shirt.

"But," Jim starts in a lighter, more upbeat tone, "in the meantime, I'm kind of eager to get my retirement started." He says, taking a sip of his coffee.

"Well," Kate says, the tone of the conversation shifting suddenly, "I'm getting shown the house this afternoon and I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up taking it." She tells him, lifting her cup up to her lips again. "Why don't we rent it together?" She shrugs.

Jim smiles over the rim of his mug. "You'd really want me living that close?" He tests her.

Kate rolls her eyes, "Dad, I spent eighteen years living with you. It'll be like old times." Jim smiles and nods, seeming happy at the arrangement as Barbra comes back around the counter to refill their mugs. "But what will you do in the meantime?"

Jim shrugs and sets his mug down. "I don't know, maybe... just go with what your mother and I had planned." He says, quickly looking up to Barbra with a smile before looking back toward Kate. "Maybe settle down here in town and open a shop somewhere."

"You thinking of settling down here?" Barbra asks as she fills his mug with fresh coffee.

"That's right," Jim smiles.

Barbra smirks as she fills up Kate's mug. "Do you fish?"

* * *

The next morning, Kate is sitting in the same green patio chair, Sasha sitting calmly with her side up against her legs, mewling her head lazily into her fingers as she pets her.

She takes another sip of her coffee and sees him come out through the trees, his muscles glistening with sweat as they do every morning. Kate checks her watch and sees she only has a few minutes. "Hey," she greets him as Sasha gets up with her tail wagging to welcome her master home.

Rick bends down and puts his hands in Sasha's fur, deciding not to respond for a moment.

He's more stonefaced than he was yesterday. Kate chuckles as he takes the seat across from her. "I thought we established that stone-walling me won't get rid of me."

"I just have nothing to say, that's all." He says, leaning back and laying his arm on the table, his fingers instinctively finding the shape of the cup sitting near him.

"That's okay," she says with a content smile. "I uh..." she starts, "I signed the lease... one year, but the landlord said he was willing to accept an offer on the place." She tells him, looking over to him. "My dad and I are having our stuff sent down here and we're going to be moving in tomorrow, but we're still talking about whether or not to settle down there."

Castle's brow pinches and he finds himself looking over to her in curiosity. "Your dad?"

A smile engulfs her features and Rick's heart skips a beat when he sees it. A real, genuine smile like that always gets to him. "He flew in overnight and came by my motel yesterday morning." She explains with a smile. "He was talking about retiring when I left New York but it turns out he was serious, so... he decided to move out here with me."

She's... she's really moving out here? It was one thing when she was just living out of a suitcase in a motel, or even just renting a place nearby, but... she's never put it in real terms that she's staying.

"Well," she says with a smile, looking over to him after checking her watch, "I better go." She stands up. "I have to meet my dad at the store to sign the papers."

When she starts to walk away, she hears him turn in the chair. "Wait," he stops her, and she bites her bottom lip in joy, "store, what store?"

She turns with a softer smile. "A bait and tackle shop on the other side of the lake." She says with a nod toward the lake. "Barbra's godfather is looking to retire and he doesn't have anyone to leave the store to, so my dad and I went down yesterday afternoon and talked to him and made him an offer."

"Wait," Rick shakes his head, "so you're opening a fishing store here?"

Kate nods, a soft smile still playing across her face. "Just in case you were waiting for me to flake out and give up, well... you don't have to worry about that."

Rick can only clench his jaw, watching her smile still softly play on her features.

"My dad and I agreed that he'd go in early in the morning and open up and I'll go in later and close up, so I'll be coming by every morning before I go in. So if ever you and Alexis want a boat rental, let me know." She says, still smiling confidently. "I'll hook you up. See you tomorrow?" She says, lifting her cup slightly.

All he can do is give her a small nod as she turns around and makes for her car.


	14. Chapter 14

_Nikki convulsed violently in Jamison's arms, her eyes looking up at him in terror. _

_"Mmm!" She groaned painfully, her body twitching as Jamie sits in the wet gravel, rocking her back and forth with angry tears flooding his eyes. _

_"No," he whispered, cupping her cheek, his voice optimistic and his smile heavy. "You're going to be fine, Nikki." He told her, petting her cheekbone. "You hear? You'll be fine. Then we can just..." he shook his head, pulling her twitching body into him, "we can go back to how it was. I'm fine with that. We don't have to rush things." _

_"MmmMMMmm!" Nikki groaned again, her flooding eyes rolling and blood starting to seep from the corners of her mouth. _

_Jamison felt her tap against his thigh with her fingers. He doesn't want to look away, knowing these are her last moments. But when he looked down to his leg, he saw she had drawn a heart on the inside of his pant leg in blood. His heart broke in that instant, knowing it will never be repaired. He only ever got to have her body. But only now, in her last moments, does he have her heart. _

_Jamie looks back up to her, a painful smile pushing onto his face. "I love you too, Nikki." He said, cupping her cheek again. _

_A tear fell from her eye and she smiled. _

_She convulsed in his arms once more before her eyes drifted shut and when her body goes limp, Rook feels her hand lay limply onto his leg. _

_And in that moment, he knew she was gone. _

Rick pounds his finger down into the period and leans back in his office chair. He's going to save for the deeper inner monologues for later. He hasn't done any serious writing in a long time. His next book has been in the editing phase since he moved out here, sitting idly on his hard drive. It's hard writing this. To him, there is no Nikki Heat or Jamison Rook. There's him and there's Beckett. These are just his fantasies put into words. Sure, he challenges his characters, puts them through trials and tribulations, but still, he knows that in the end, since it's him in the stories, he usually ends up being the one to win.

Rick sighs and pushes against the front of his laptop as he stands up, making his way to the window.

It's late afternoon and he's bored. Before this morning, he was actually thinking of taking up fishing as a hobby. He always wanted to try that archery fishing he saw on Facebook, go up to the Willamette during a salmon spawn and try his luck and skill. That would be a fun day. But now, once again, something else of his has been poisoned by her. Now, every time he looks out this window and out onto the lake, seeing another elderly retiree or father and son out on the bank with two rods in the water, he'll think of her.

He'll wonder if the man in the rental boat he's looking at on the far end of the lake down there, disturbing the glass surface of the water, went into her shop and smiled at her, worked some sort of charm. He'll wonder if whatever he said to her will run through her head when she debates to herself on squashing his advances, wonder what she'll say to him. He'll wonder if she'll make it as difficult for any of them as she did for him. Maybe all it will take is a certain way of smiling he doesn't have, a career history he doesn't have, a personality trait he doesn't possess, or a certain type of wit and demeanor that he doesn't have to win her over in a matter of minutes or hours, as opposed to a matter of years as it did for him.

Rick crosses his arms in front of the window and lets out a heavy sigh. He doesn't know why it matters to him. Maybe it's just a way of keeping himself in check rather than thinking about her. But as he hears the door to Alexis's car close just below his office that is directly above the garage, he smiles. He hears Sasha lift her head up off the leather loveseat that sits perpendicular to his desk at the noise, and hears the sound of the door opening and Alexis making her way upstairs.

After another few moments, she cracks open the door to his office, poking her head in. "Dad?"

Rick looks over his shoulder with a smile, "Hey, pumpkin."

Alexis smiles and creases her brow. "You're dressed more nicely than usual." She says, noting his attire of a white button-up shirt with light blue pinstripes with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of dark blue jeans.

Rick shrugs his shoulders as he moves away from the window. "I had a few errands to run." He explains. "I was looking at supplies to finally build that dock."

Alexis smiles as she moves over to sit down next to Sasha. "You're finally doing that?" She asks him, glancing down at the screen of his laptop. He smirks and reaches down to scratch Sasha's chin when she awkwardly lifts her head up behind her to look at him.

"Mmhmm," he hums, looking back over to his daughter after a moment, catching her looking away from his laptop. "It's going to take a while, but I think I can manage it. And after it's done," he says as Alexis slowly turns around and sits down next to Sasha on the loveseat, "we can finally get that boat."

Alexis's smile seems heavy when she looks back up to her father, her hand finding Sasha's neck. "That'll be nice."

Rick smiles and looks over at the clock. "You're home kinda late for today."

"Well," Alexis blushes and runs her finger behind her ear, "I had another date. Ethan brought me a late lunch after he got off work."

Rick smiles and leans against the edge of his desk. "You mean Mr. gas station?" He jokes, crossing his arms.

"Dad," Alexis feigns a frustrated groan. "I really like him, can you not call him that?"

"Oh," Rick nods, "so you really like him, huh?" He asks her with a smirk. When Alexis just smiles and looks away bashfully. "Okay then..." he starts, crossing his arms again. "What are... his top likes?"

Alexis smiles. "Greek philosophy," she starts, looking up at the ceiling as she counts off, "historical documentaries, and metalworking."

"Okay," he nods again. This guy sounds kinda weird, but if Alexis likes him... "biggest dislikes?"

"Food with shells, scales, and or fur still on it, customized license plates, and people who dress up animals." She says with a smile.

Rick chuckles to himself. "Okay, there's no way you asked him this." He challenges as he pushes off the edge of his desk and paces across the room, quickly spinning around. "Favorite superhero."

Alexis smiles confidently. "Etrigan the-"

"Etrigan the demon?" Rick finishes excitedly. "Oh man, this guy has good taste." He breathes with a smile. "Gone, gone, the form of man," he starts in a low growl, "arise the demon... Etrigan." He recites, calling upon his inner nerd. "Okay, final question." He says, putting his hands together flat and rubbing his palms together greedily. "When do I get to meet him?" He wags his brow and grins evilly.

Alexis stands up and looks at her father with a worried gaze. "He's picking me up tonight, but Dad, _please _don't embarrass me."

"Hey," he says softly, putting his hands on his daughter's arms with a smile. "I will be a picture-perfect father." He assures her. "And by that, I mean, I will certainly won't threaten him in any way if he makes a move on you."

"Dad," Alexis shakes her head, "you'll just be giving him what he wants."

Rick blinks. "What?" He asks in a small voice.

Alexis smiles and blushes. "Yeah, I asked him about it. I remember exactly what he said. He said... I'd actually prefer he not like me because then I'll know that you're not looking to get something from me that you didn't get from him." Rick just blinks and rolls his shoulders back, letting his hands fall off her arms. "He wants me to like him for him and I..." she blushes again with a smile, "I thought it was sweet."

"Well..." Rick says, "I can understand that." He's still worried. Alexis has never had a real serious relationship before. He doesn't want her to feel as if she's getting in over her head by anything. "Sweetie, I just want you to know," he starts more seriously, "to be careful, okay? I don't want you to be afraid to come to me if he starts pressuring you."

"Dad," She practically rolls her eyes at him, "he's not like that, I promise. I mean..." she shrugs, "he's a bit of a stoic... mysterious type but he's also the kind to let you know what's on his mind."

"Well, I'm glad that you like Mr. gas station, pumpkin." He says with a smile.

Alexis shakes her head and steps into her father, wrapping her arms around his chest and squeezing him. "Me too."

* * *

Kate was worried about this. But Sasha is too adorable and likes her too much to be ignored just because she didn't want to get dog hair on her work t-shirt. She sat down and jumped herself into her lap and laid herself down across her chest, reaching up and putting her head on her shoulder. Now, Kate sits with her hand in the thick fur of Sasha's neck, with the dog laid pleasantly and awkwardly dead on Kate's lap.

She's eager to get started at the shop, but not as eager as her dad was the night before. They'd signed the lease and gotten all the utilities turned on before the night was up and sprang for takeout until they could go grocery shopping. She can't remember the last time she had some real home cooking. She's glad to be living with her father again. They've drifted apart over the years, starting even before her mom died. High school was a really rough patch for them during her wild-child phase, and her mom dying just made it worse. But she's glad to get back to a time when they could have a real father-daughter relationship, like when she was growing up.

It's one things she's always been a little envious of with Alexis. She hasn't let her growing up come in between how close she and her father are.

Kate reaches around and takes another drink of her coffee and sees Rick stride out of the treeline, stretching his left arm back and behind his head. As Sasha's instincts kick in and she climbs off of Kate's lap to go to the end of her lead to meet him, Kate is left with a tightening throat, a coiling stomach, and an electric shiver running up her spine. Her skin flushes hotly with a flash of cold sweat as she sees the outline of his abs press against his shirt when he pulls both his arms back behind him to stretch, putting all his muscles on display for her.

God, she wants him.

There are moments of guilty pleasure like now, where he catches her off her guard with the sharp bulge of his bicep as he curls his arm back or the muscles in his neck as he rolls his neck out, that she forgets herself. She's seen guys that are built like that before, but seeing him built like this, seeing the man she fell for, not the body but the heart, the will, the intuition and charm and childish sense of wonderment and sense of humor and dedication to the people he loves, built like this... she knows who he truly is underneath all of this stoicism and stone-faced expressions.

"Morning," she says with a smile as he plops down in the chair across from her, making no motion for the coffee that sits waiting for him.

Like always, he doesn't make the first move, instead inviting Sasha over by spreading his legs and putting his hands out in the shape of her head, where she quickly pushes through and jumps on his lap.

"You know, Castle..." she starts with an aching heart, craning her neck as she slumps in the chair, "I thought that my telling you that I'm settling down here would get you to start working things out."

Rick's expression hardens. "There's nothing to work out, Beckett."

"Castle," she shakes her head, "if you've been pretending like we never had the relationship we had together, you can't honestly tell me you're happy out here."

"I haven't been pretending anything, Beckett." He argues. "I've just moved on."

Still slamming her head fruitlessly against that same wall. She grits her teeth and looks over to him. "You know, I've been thinking a lot lately... about what you said."

When she doesn't continue, he peaks over to her. "What do you mean?"

She's ready with her response, firing it out just as soon as he pulls the trigger. "You said that I assumed I believed it when Tyson tried to frame you for murder, when he tried to make it seem like you had cheated on me." Rick looks out ahead of him with a dull, lidded gaze. "Rick..." she demands in a shaky, harsh tone, waiting for him to look over. When he does, she's staring right into his eyes. "I was the _only _one that believed you. While everyone else thought you were guilty, _I _stood by you." She tells him pointedly, starting to get furious with him that he's forgotten. "Doesn't that count for anything?"

Rick breathes a relaxing sigh and shakes his head to himself. "Then tell me how you felt when they showed you the emails." He demands right back, looking over to her.

Her throat closes and she doesn't have a response that makes her argument stand any better. "What does it matter? I didn't believe them."

Rick stands up slowly and shakes his head again, throwing off her answer. "That's not what I said." He says, looking down to her. "I know you, Beckett, you follow evidence and the evidence pointed to me having an affair, so if you're pushing so hard that you believed me when no one else did, tell me you didn't believe those emails when you read them."

She springs to her feet at him, but isn't as quick to respond as she'd like. She can't lie to him because she knows her answer is painted on her face. "Okay," she says in a tiny, barely audible voice. When he clenches his jaw and his eyes harden, she continues. "When Ryan and Esposito showed me the emails and said that you were having an affair, I..." she tries, her heart feeling like it's turning into sharpened shards inside of her chest, "Rick, reading those emails broke my heart."

All he can do is nod and start toward the house.

But she's going after him, reaching over and putting her hand on his bicep, his chilled sweat making her skin tingle when she touches him. "It broke my heart," she stops him, "because I couldn't believe the man I waited to get it right with would do that to me."

He stops and turns to face her directly. "You're supposed to know me better than that, Kate."

"Rick, it's just..." she says in a tight voice, shaking her head, "imagining you two together... imagining you kissing her the way you kissed me, thinking I was stupid for thinking you would kiss me in some special way but getting shown emails that told me that you did it for her. Thinking that all of the times we'd made love and all of the times I thought about how magical and special it was between us meant nothing... can you at least understand why that hurt?"

She can see him clench his jaw, crane his neck and give her a stern nod. "Thinking about me with someone else hurt?" He asks her.

She sighs a sigh that drains her lungs of air. "Like you couldn't imagine."

"The thought of..." he starts to approach her, "me with someone else poisoning every thought you have of us, the thought that every time I kissed you how I could have been thinking or even wishing it was someone else."

She breathes as best she can again to answer. "Yes."

"The thought of how small and helpless you felt imagining it all, thinking that maybe something you'd said or something you did made me feel the need to go out and find someone else, just as a backhanded way of hurting you to get back at you." He's had this floating around his head for too long. It's about time it got a voice of its own. "The thought that if maybe you had just done something differently, I wouldn't have felt the need to find someone else, or maybe the complete heartbreak it is to be forced to face the fact that maybe as hard as you tried to get it right with me, that maybe you just weren't enough for me and that nothing you could do could change that? Something like that?"

Her burning eyes look up to him and she feels small and broken. "Yes."

He hardens back up and gives her another stern nod before leaning back. "Well, at least you knew what it felt like for me when you were with Vaughn."

He doesn't even give her a chance to argue back and just strides over to the stairs of his patio in as large a strides as he can manage, jumping up two steps at once, leaving her reeling and stunned. "Wait, Castle!" She demands, going over him, grabbing onto his wrist. He looks down to her in the same stern glare as before. "Vaughn?" She asks, her voice on the verge of breaking. "You're upset about that?"

His eyes narrow. "Upset?!" He repeats back.

She clearly just set him off.

Rick stomps back down the stairs to stand directly in front of her. "You kissed another man behind my back, Beckett."

"No, Rick, I-"

"You try to tell me that you were hurt reading those emails?" He fights with her, not even giving her a chance to fight back. "Kate, I was _terrified_..." he says pointedly, "that something would happen between you two." When she looks into his eyes, she can see something behind the angry bravado that she's not used to seeing in him.

Fear.

"You think it wasn't painful for me having to imagine the two of you together? You think I wasn't scared to death that I'd lose you to him?" He edges toward her imposingly. "After the four years I tried to get you to give me a chance and after all the trust I had to win to get you to be with me, you think I wasn't the least bit hurt when he comes in and gets that same amount of trust without any effort at all?"

"Rick, I didn't-" she pathetically tries to grovel.

"Or did you not think that about any of that and you just wanted to see me get hurt and didn't care if you stepped on my heart in the process?"

"Castle, I didn't kiss Vaughn. I tried to tell you that."

Rick just pinches his brow, narrows his eyes, and shakes his head, as if he can't believe what he just heard. "Even after all that, that's all you have to say?" He demands.

"Castle, I'm just trying to work this out for us, but I don't know what you want from me."

"You're not trying to work out anything, Beckett." He says in a low, growling tone, stepping up to her imposingly again with the same, angry clench in his jaw. "What you're trying to do is just find someone that will take you in."

"That's _not _true!" She finally finds her fight, jabbing him in his firm chest with the sharp point of her finger. "I _love _you and I'm trying to get you to see that."

"Beckett, you've been coming by for two weeks now and in that time, the _only _thing you've done," he practically spits at her, "is defend yourself. You've been coming by trying to get me to understand why you left, saying you don't care that I've moved on. You've been so busy trying to get me to see things through your eyes that you haven't taken a single second of that time to try it the other way around because maybe if you had, you would've realized that you haven't even_ apologized yet!" _

His words leave her completely stunned, a stark and world-stopping realization hitting her like an oncoming train. It leaves her broken inside, speechless, and feeling just as small and helpless as... as he did when she was with Vaughn.

When he cranes his neck and looks back up to her, his flare of anger has subsided. "Which tells me..." he continues in a hushed, more under control voice, "that you don't even regret what you did to us... do you? You don't regret putting me through what you did with Vaughn, you don't regret lying to me about your job in DC, you don't regret leaving me without a single word for that job, you probably don't even regret lying to me at all because I know you lied to me about going back to the NYPD."

She tries her voice, tries to defend herself, but can't find it. All that happens is a small scratch coming from the back of her closed throat.

"So, no, Beckett, we can't work this out, because I'm tired of coming in last in people's lives and still be expected to be happy with it just because I get a prize at the end of the race." He takes one last shot at her before turning to start up the stairs again. "I'm done, Beckett."

When he slams the door behind him, she lets her breath go and it shakes with an intense sob. She squeezes her lips together and shakes her head, trying hard to wrangle in her emotions.

With her heart stomped on, she turns and goes back to her car.

* * *

_A/N: Would have gotten this out yesterday, but I pressed the wrong button on my keyboard and lost the last 2k words and felt depressed and angry. It's over now though. :)_

_A/N2: I wasn't really going to say anything because I don't want to give away too much of the plot, especially not before the next chapter (which is a really important one), but I've kind of gotten my hand forced. I've been getting an awful lot of reviews saying "I don't see a happy ending, so I'm not reading anymore!"_

_The only thing I can really say is Reaching, or Can't Go Home Again. Go back and read those stories. There were times in those that seemed hopeless too. Challenging expectations for the characters and subverting them is kind of what I do. I like hearing things like "it sounds so hopeless!" because that's the tone I'm going for. But what I don't like hearing is that it looks so hopeless that people aren't willing to stick around. I don't want to say much, but things will shift greatly in the next chapter. _

_So please, give me a bit of a break here. Of course I'm not going to go through all this just to have Kate bat her eyes and fall into Rick's arms. I told you from the beginning that it was Kate chasing after Rick. I can't make it be too easy, while at the same time keeping it rewarding for the reader in the end._

_Sorry for the schpeel, it's just a bit aggravating to hear "this story that isn't even done yet isn't going how I wanted, so I'm done." _


	15. Chapter 15

The people are really nice here. It's a welcome bonus aside from it seeming to really slow down in the afternoon. She still has some studying to do, but luckily her dad has been fishing his whole life and knows most of the ins and outs. She'll pick up on it eventually. No one that's come in has been an overt jerk to her or overtly flirtatious with her. It's been slow for most of her first day in the store, which left her to sit behind the long glass counter along the back wall that faces the entrance of the store.

Her dad is outside, down by the rental docks talking to a regular customer who knew the old owner and was welcome to have a conversation with him. So now, Kate sits in a pair of jeans, running shoes, and her army green loose-fitting t-shirt with the store's emblem in the right corner above the pocket, going over some of the fishing manuals she borrowed off of one of the shelves near the left side of the store. Checking her watch as she flips a page, she sees it's almost the time when her father agreed to leave for the day and let her close up the store at seven. They open at five and her dad got in this morning at four thirty.

She's glad to have some sort of purpose again, something to do. It's not what she had dedicated herself to, but it's something in her life to keep up and maintain, something that requires her attention, energy, and her time. It's a welcome blessing after what happened to her career in law enforcement. All things considered, she's lucky to have a job where she can be her own boss, or at the very least can work very comfortably with the boss she does have in her dad.

But the store isn't what will take her effort. It's a commitment, but not the one she's working toward. He broke her heart again this morning, left her reeling and shaken. It was another time in their relationship when all she could do was stand there and take his words and couldn't respond with anything because not only had she not ever thought of him ever feeling that way, she never thought he'd ever say it to her.

It's one of the biggest reasons why she both wanted him out of her life and never wanted him to leave it at the same time. He's the only one to ever have the guts to tell her the things no one else would. No one's had that sort of directness with her since her mother... and even her mother did it in a loving way, maybe too loving for her own good.

Emotionally drained for the day, she finishes the page she's absentmindedly reading and flips the manual closed, slipping off the stool and moving out from behind the glass display counter and over to the bookshelves along the left side of the store. As she's putting the manual back on the shelf, she hears the bell attached to the top of the door ring, sounding that they have a customer. Instinctively, Kate smiles a friendly, welcoming smile and turns around to greet them.

"Hi and welcome to..." she trails off as she turns to see a familiar redhead in a pale blue knee-length skirt, ballet flats, a pale blue v-necked blouse, and a denim jacket, holding the door open with her hand and looking straight at her with an almost scared arch in her brow. All the air gets pulled from her lungs when Kate sees her. She was terrified this would happen. She can't be surprised it happened now, after what happened between them this morning. "Alexis..."

Kate can hear her let out a short breath and lets go of the door, pulling up on the strap of her purse that hung from the bend of her elbow. She closes her mouth and seems to swallow her nerves as Kate stands at the end of the aisle.

Kate takes a weak step forward and motions toward the girl. "Is um..." she tries, her voice failing, "is everything okay?"

Alexis still seems to have trouble forming words as Kate slowly moves down another aisle and back toward the center of the store where the aisles split, coming to stand in front of the glass display case. After a moment, she sees Alexis look out the glass pane of the entrance and out to the parking lot, where Kate can see a white pick-up truck parked on the opposite end. The guy inside, looking about Alexis's age, standing outside of his truck, seems to give Alexis a confident nod, and she seems to take it as her cue to strengthen her resolve because when she turns back around to face her with her eyes down to the carpet, she hardens her shoulders and looks back up to her. "We need to talk." She says in a low, almost shaky voice.

Kate lets out a breath that tightens her lungs and nods, giving the girl the lead. "O-okay."

Frozen in place, Kate watches as the girl tightens her fists and shifts her weight from side to side. She knows that there is only one person that could keep her from the man she loves. There is only one person on the planet that could tell her to stay away and she'd have no choice but to listen to them. And it's her. "You..." Alexis tries, still not looking up to her, "I know you're trying to get back together with my dad, and..." she says, her voice still shaky and nervous, "you're really upsetting him."

With the air pulled from Kate's lungs, she chooses her words very carefully as she takes a small step forward. "Alexis," she says softly, "I know things have been rough lately but..." that gains her Alexis's frightful eyes and it makes Kate pause. She always wanted to develop more of a friendship with Alexis. She looks as scared to talk to her as Kate is scared to hear what she has to say. "But I know how I feel about him and... I understand completely," she urges her, "if you're here to tell me I have to stop, but Alexis-"

"That's not why I'm here." She interrupts her, finally finding a firm voice. Kate stops, a part of her incredibly relieved, but another part terrified as to why she might actually be here. "Look," she says, taking a step away from the door, "I know that whatever your going through is hard for you and all but... but you broke his heart."

Kate lets out another breath and takes another slow step toward her, lifting her hands out in front of her to try and motion that she's not going to hurt her. "I know that, Alexis." She can see a slight furrow run into her brow when she hears that. "I know I hurt him when I left for DC, but please, understand, that it was never my intention." She can see the furrow that was only there for a second reappear as Alexis's eyes harden. "If I had known he was going to propose, I-"

Kate gets cut off by the store phone ringing on the other side of the counter behind her.

She looks over her shoulder to the phone and then back over to the girl, "Excuse me," she says just before quickly darting toward the phone.

"You didn't see him, okay?!" Alexis says loudly, going after Kate as she moves toward the phone, but stops when she hears Alexis's firm, angry voice behind her. "You weren't there." She continues, while Kate remains facing away from her, letting the phone stop ringing after four rings. "I was, I saw it all, so _stop _pretending like you can fix everything by saying what your intentions were." Kate looks over her shoulder, feeling cold tears in her eyes as the girl scolds her, seeing Alexis's eyes have gone down to the carpet again. "Your intentions don't mean anything. Stop hiding behind your intentions of never meaning to hurt him thinking that it will solve anything!"

Kate feels as if she's a cracked statue, waiting for just the right gust of wind to come along and blow her to pieces. Out of all the people in her, or anyone elses life, she doesn't know how to handle hearing this from Alexis.

When Alexis finally looks back up to Kate, she can see the girl's eyes are glimmering with emotions. "You and my dad caught murderers together for years. How many of them tried to say they were innocent by explaining their intentions to you?" Kate feels her throat close, because she knows the girl is right. Almost every single one of them tried to tell her that they committed the murder she and her partner proved because it was with good intentions for them.

"Alexis..." Kate breathes out, "I know I have a lot to do to get him to trust me again but-"

Kate stops when Alexis lets out a hard breath and shakes her head. "You still don't get it, do you?" She challenges her. "You know, you weren't there, but I was, okay?" She tells her, seeming to have fully grasped her inner fighter. "I was the one that came home that afternoon after you stood him up. He had this," she trails off and looks away from her, "whole romantic evening all planned and set up for you, there were flower petals all over the floor of his office and in the bedroom, he had candles ready and wine and music."

Kate feels her heart crumble into pieces at that.

But Alexis is continuing to hammer her with nothing but the truth. "He was so sure that all you needed was a sign that he wanted some kind of future together to get you to stay together with him that when you left it broke him more than I've ever seen." She tells her, looking into her eyes again. "I remember my mom cheating on him," Kate's breath hitches violently, but Alexis is continuing on ahead like it was a footnote, "and leaving us, I remember Gina taking him to divorce court and demanding he pay her alimony when he wanted to go back to marriage counseling, but you leaving him was the only time I was ever really afraid of what might happen to him."

When Alexis seems to give her a moment, Kate blinks away her tears and shakes her head to herself. "It..." she tries, but fails the first time, "it was that bad?"

Alexis shrugs her nervously tight shoulders and looks away. "When he told me he was going away on vacation across the country while I would be gone on outward bound, I was scared of what he might do... and I knew he wouldn't go diving off any cliffs if I was around." She explains in a calmer, more somber tone. "I was still growing up after his divorces so he always had me to focus on after he got his heart broken. I knew that me being around would stop him from doing anything drastic." She explains, pulling up on the strap of her small purple purse. "I thought that we'd go home after the summer, but when he bought the house just before the semester started, I decided to transfer to OSU and live here with him. And I really like living out here."

Kate nods and swallows thickly. "Then..." she starts hesitantly, not wanting to broach the topic, "Alexis... why did you say you aren't here to tell me to stop coming by?" She asks, not wanting the girl to remember that that's why she was really here and just forgot. "I mean, he's told me that he's happy out here and I'm glad that he is but... if it was that bad, then why are you here?"

Alexis lets out a breath and nods solemnly. "Because he may have been at his worst when you left," she says as she looks away, but looks back over to Kate, "but he was at his best when he was with you."

That breaks through the painful layer of thick ice that had formed around Kate's heart, giving her an odd sense of hope.

Alexis shakes her head before continuing. "I don't know what it is about you, and frankly, I don't care what it is. All I know is that he was happy when he was with you."

Kate bites the inside of her lip for a moment, debating whether to ask. "I thought he was happy out here without me."

Alexis's thick breath can be heard from Kate's place a distance of six feet away. "He's content and feels at home out here, and he may be happy some of the time, but I don't want to have to worry about him for the rest of my life." She says, looking over to Kate again. "He was writing when I got home from class today and I saw something that has me really worried about him, and I know he's not happy. I won't leave him but I also don't want to feel I need to hover around him just to get him to alright with himself."

"So," Kate attempts, "why are you here?"

Alexis wrings her fingers together again. "I'm here to tell you that if you want to get him back... stop thinking about yourself and put yourself in his shoes for a change. Dad always said that you were good at what you do because you empathized with the victims, well... maybe you should try and do that with him." She says with a condifent force in her voice. "Stop trying to defend yourself, stop lying to him, and stop pretending like you didn't hurt him as much as you did."

Kate feels Alexis stare right through her and after a tense moment between them, Kate nods and looks away. "I was going to apologize tomorrow, Alexis." She says, but Alexis is already shaking her head to herself.

"Please," Alexis says and lifts her hand, "don't apologize unless you're really sorry. Because all you'll be doing is lying to him again." Alexis bores her emotionally glimmering eyes into her again. "And if you're not," she starts with a shrug, "then I don't know what to do." She finishes and turns around to make for the entrance.

But Kate is stopping her, "Alexis." She says firmly.

Alexis stops with her hand ready to pull on the handle, looking over her shoulder.

Kate feels her throat shake. "Why didn't she tell me she had an affair?"

Alexis seems to know what Kate's talking about by the way her eyes relax and the way she nods slowly. "My mom was always a lot smarter than she lets on." She shrugs. "Just because my dad never said anything to poison me against her didn't stop her from trying it with me." She says to herself. "My dad doesn't like talking about it, but... my mom," she shakes her head, "she's the kind of person that would rather poison the entire cake if it wasn't made for her. If she doesn't get to be the center of attention, she'll make sure no one else is either."

Kate feels her eyes burn, remembering exactly how much guilt and blame she'd put on him after asking Meredith what had happened. "He..." she tries in a voice that's barely even there. "He never... how come he never told me about it?"

Alexis looks away and shrugs. "Because he still thinks it's somehow his fault."

All the air is pulled from Kate's body as Alexis pulls open the door and darts outside. With her heart shattered inside of her chest, Kate drags her feet across the store and looks out the entrance to see Alexis marching across the parking lot, reaching up to her face with her hand and swatting away at her cheeks just as the driver side door of the pick up opens and the driver steps out. Alexis quickly makes for him and puts her arms around his neck. She watches for a moment as the guy hangs his arms out to his sides for a moment before slowly putting them around her and rubbing her back.

* * *

It's later that night when Rick is standing at the shore of the lake. Alexis is out on her date with the guy she met and has been gone all afternoon. He seemed like a decent, stand-up kind of guy. He made it clear and wasn't afraid to tell him that he wasn't worried about what he thought of him, instead was more worried about what Alexis thought of him. He seemed like the kind of guy that had nothing to hide, didn't seem as if he had any ulterior motives or was putting up a facade to impress him.

He's glad that Alexis has found someone like that.

But now, he's just sitting here on the bank of his lakefront property, watching the sky turn dark as the sun sets. The town is quiet, with the only sounds being of frogs croaking, birds flapping their wings from tree to tree, a woodpecker off in the distance knocking away, and the sound of the water in front of him.

His peace is disturbed momentarily by the sound of a car passing by on the street behind him. Waiting for it to pass before going back to listening to the sounds of the nature around him, it takes a moment before he hears the engine turn off and the sound of a door open, then get shut a few seconds later. He lets out a breath, thinking it must be Greg getting home late again. Traffic was probably heavy.

But after another moment, he can hear the grass getting disturbed behind him as a set of footsteps approach. He feels himself harden, a thick layer of ice forming. "It's beautiful out tonight." She says in a low voice.

Rick doesn't respond, instead just keeps his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans.

Kate looks at him from a distance of a good six feet or so, looking at his outfit of jeans, wingtips, and a lightly colored button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His hair is more styled to that of what it used to be, as opposed to the dryer spikier look it usually has in the morning. "You can actually see stars here." She says on a light chuckle, looking up to the sky. "We never got to see stars in New York."

Rick sighs harshly and turns around, taking his hands from his pockets and looking up the hill to her. "What do you want, Beckett?" He asks impatiently before seeing her. She already has tears running down her face. He can tell they've been there for a while.

When she looks down to meet his eyes, she blinks and looks defeated already. Her voice sounds soiled as she shakes her head emotionally. "I'm sorry."

Rick nods, a pain forming in his stomach. "But?" He starts for her and takes a step up the hill.

But Kate is shaking her head, looking him in the eye as she approaches him from up the hill. "No," she starts, "not this time." She says, stopping a few feet away from him. "This isn't an attempt to dismiss what I did to you, Rick. I'm... I'm through defending myself. What I did..." she shakes her head, "you have every reason in the world to push me away. I would too. I am..." she says, her voice trembling, "_so _sorry... for everything I put you through. From... from letting you worry about Vaughn, to lying to you about my interview, and not coming to talk to you that day... I'm sorry for everything, Rick." She says, her voice breaking just before she says his name.

Rick clenches his jaw and cranes his neck.

"Rick," she breathes, taking another step down the hill toward him as he looks back up to her, "if you think I don't regret what I let happen between us, you're wrong."

"You broke my heart, Beckett." He says in a firm tone with an underbite of held-back anger.

"I know that, Rick," she says in a soiled tone as she moves down the hill to stand in front of him, perpendicular to the lake. "And I have to break it again if I'm going to stop lying to you." She says, looking up to his eyes.

Rick hardens again as she steps in front of him. "What do you mean?"

Kate pinches her lips together and swallows. "Castle, I never quit the AG's office."

Rick's brow pinches and his eyes dilate with worry. "What are you talking about?" He asks in a low, cautious tone.

"I lied when I told you I quit the AG's office." She says again. "The truth is I was fired."

"You were fired?" He asks, but Kate is lifting her hands to him, already shaking her head to try and get him to stop. "For what?"

"No, Rick, I can't tell you, _please _understand." She pleads, stepping into him with frightful tears in her eyes.

"Well, I don't understand, Kate, what is-"

"No, Rick, _please_!" She begs, stepping into him fully with her hands on his chest. "I know that you not getting to know something is usually a dog whistle for you to run head first at it but I'm _begging _you, _please _don't press me on this!" She pleads with him emotionally, tears falling down her face. "All I can tell you," she starts again, taking a step back and letting her hands slide off his chest, only now letting herself really feel him, "is that I'm really lucky to get to stand here in front of you."

Rick nods at her sternly. "So you were fired." He states plainly. Kate closes her mouth and doesn't respond. "You never... quit because it wasn't what you thought it was."

Kate shakes her head. "No."

Rick nods again, "And lying to me about the NYPD? What was that exactly?" He demands.

Her throat closes again. "Rick, because of what happened while I was at the AG's office, I've been barred from law enforcement."

HIs brow furrows softly for a moment before his eyes seem to soften. "Barred from law enforcement?"

Kate nods. "I went back to try and get my job back with the NYPD after the AG's office fired me and they told me that I've been blacklisted by the federal government." She tells him pointedly. "I can never work in law enforcement again... in any capacity." She says, another line of hot tears falling down either side of her face.

When she lets the silence fall over them again, Rick cranes his neck and nods. "So..." he starts in a low voice, "I really am your last choice after all." He says, sounding pained. "You only came to find me because you didn't have anywhere else to go."

Kate feels her eyes well up again. "Now you know why I lied to you." She tells him in a soiled voice. "But Rick," she says, taking another step back into him, "if you want the truth, I love you more now... and I ever have before any of this happened." She says, looking directly into his eyes. "I know it took getting it taken from me to see it, but I got to see what my life is like without you, and just because I didn't give it up before it got taken from me doesn't mean it meant more to me than my relationship with you does. Rick," she says, trying to reach for his hands, but pulls back and just decides to put her hands on his stomach, "I know you won't believe me now, but my relationship with you was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I'm sorry I let things fall apart, but that doesn't mean that I stopped loving you, because I never did."

Rick gives her a moment, icing himself over against her as she lets her hands fall off his abs. "Kate, if you really meant any of that, you would have said it when you first came back."

When his words hit her ears, she feels another emotion start to take over.

"I'm tired of playing this game with you. I'm not doing it anymore." He says to her plainly and turns away from her to start up the hill.

But before he can take a step, her hand flies up and she latches onto his arm, her nails digging harshly into his bicep. Rick looks back and sees her jaw is clenched and her eyes are drained of emotion. When Rick tries to pull his arm away, Kate only tightens her grip. After a moment, her eyes flick up to him and she pulls on his arm with all her strength to drag him back down the hill in front of her, looking up to him with confident anger.

"Listen," she says in a low voice, standing directly in front of him, "I've been trying like hell to open myself up to you for two weeks and now, after the first time I've ever poured my heart out to anyone in my entire life, all you give me is another lecture. Well, if you're so hell bent on pushing me away, then I want you to just say it." She demands sternly.

"Say what?" He demands back.

Kate lifts her hand and jabs him in the chest with her finger. "I want you to _look _me in the eye and tell me that you don't love me anymore." She says, looking him directly in the eye.

All Rick can do is stand there, with his heart going into his throat, not being able to even form the words in his mind. "I've moved on, Kate."

"That's _not _what I said!" She says through clenched teeth, jabbing him in the chest with her finger again angrily. "I said that I want you to look me _straight _in the eye... and tell me... that you don't love me anymore... and that there is no hope for us." She challenges him, never looking away from his eyes.

When the heart that's lodged in his throat shakes, he feels all of the armor he suited himself with fall off.

And Kate can see the moment when he cranes his neck that she got through to him. But when he looks back up to her, finally showing her what was underneath it all, all she sees in his glimmering eyes is the depth of his pain as he arches his brow, his lips in a thin line. It's as if she put herself back in the moment when he first realized she was never coming.

She didn't just break his heart. It's like she shattered his soul.

"You left me for a job, Kate." He says in a shaky, soiled voice. "I wanted us to be together for the rest of our lives. I wanted to work everything out with you. After everything we'd been through..." he says, shaking his head, his eyes on the verge of breaking. "I thought I'd gotten over the worst of what heartbreak had to put me through but having to accept that you were never coming back was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. So it doesn't matter how I feel now... because I'm not going to take the risk of having to do it all over again."

When he turns and slowly starts up the hill back toward his house, it takes a moment for Kate to find her voice. "Rick."

He slows to a stop at the top of the hill and turns back around silently, his expression still etched with emotion.

Kate meets his eyes and starts up the hill with a calm, lidded gaze, never looking away from him. She approaches him almost casually and takes his jaw in her hands, leaning up to press her lips against his before he can stop her. Her chest expands to bursting at the breath she draws in as she kisses him, pulling on his jaw and pressing her lips against him as firmly as she can, just as she did that stormy night. After a few long, seconds, her body tingling at the incredible feeling of his lips and her breath still ringing with the taste of him, she pulls away, setting the heels of her running shoes back down into the grass and stroking his cheek with her thumb before letting him go.

She opens her eyes slowly to see him standing rigidly, his eyes closed and his brow creased. "I know we still love each other, Rick." She says softly, her lips turning up in the corners. She reaches under the collar of her shirt and pulls out her necklace, taking the engagement ring in her fingers and showing it to him. "And one day," she says with a smile, "you'll put this ring on my finger... because that's the only way a ring will ever end up on my finger, Rick... is if _you _put it there. I understand better than anyone not being able to admit it," she says with a soft smile and takes another step into him, letting the ring dangle from the necklace again, "but I know you still love me."

He doesn't respond, only remains silent.

"And just like you were," she says in a soft, assuring voice, "I'll be here, waiting for you to be ready." Kate reaches up and puts a hand on his chest, directly over his heart. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

He stays frozen in place as Kate makes her way back toward her car and drives away.

Her lips felt just as soft and honest as they did that first night.

* * *

_A/N: Pivotal chapter or what? :o _


	16. Chapter 16

It feels different sitting underneath his oak tree now. There's a new sense of hope, and with it, a new sense of longing driving her blood through her veins.

She knows he still loves her. There's no doubt in her mind now. Underneath all of the angry, the walls, the coldness, the bitterness, the bile and venom he has toward her, in his heart, that big heart of his, he still loves her. That alone is enough to keep her going. Somehow, it even makes her love him even more. It just goes to show her how deep-seated his love can be, how deep it can run in him. She was worthy of being in that place in his heart once, or at least he thought so. Now, whether he thinks so or not, she has to prove to him that she is... or make herself worthy enough to earn being there in the first place.

It could be the kiss she's feeling. The taste and the tingle of his lips, the vibration of want and the pull in her lungs, those long few seconds were just enough to give her body her memory back. It had been so long, she couldn't recall exactly how he made her feel when they'd kiss or when they made love without laying in bed and concentrating.

Now, she's having a hard time thinking of anything else.

But now, the morning after, she sits in the same metal patio chair with a cup of coffee in her hand and another sitting on his side of the table waiting for him when he returns from his run. Sasha is in the house and is looking at her from the window. Maybe she just didn't want to go outside when Castle left to run. Kate sits back in the chair with her free hand tucked into the pocket of her denim jacket, a content smile naturally brightening her face, and takes another slow sip of her coffee.

When the door to the garage door starts to open, Kate looks up the driveway, surprised. She sees the Ferarri parked off to one side and his silver Lexus parked next to it. It's just a few seconds after that she hears the front door to his lakehouse open. She looks up, a worried tingle starting to shake her spine for a second before she sees him come striding out of the front door in a pair of dark jeans, wingtips, a sky blue dress shirt with black pinstripe, and a charcoal sport coat that he's just pulling onto his arms.

She loves seeing his muscles glisten with sweat and the revealing nature of his workout clothes, but seeing him in his old attire of that sharply dressed playboy from New York makes her stomach coil with a mixture of nostalgia and want at the same time. She starts to stand up slowly, quickly piecing together that he's leaving, and paces her way toward the driveway to meet him before grabbing his coffee off the table.

Rick gallops down the steps of the patio with his keys in one hand, straightening the collar of his sport coat with the other and snapping on the lappels as his feet hit the cement of the walkway that leads to the garage. With Sasha barking from the living room a few times, he looks up from watching his step and sees her holding two cups of coffee, standing in his driveway with a soft, content smile shining toward him, her hair back in a wavy ponytail, a denim jacket over a shirt from her and her father's fishing shop, and a pair of black jeans.

His chest snakes with a strange feeling, mostly when his eyes find her neck.

He remembers exactly what spots to kiss on her neck and in exactly what order to kiss them in to make her melt, a combination to her safe that he was well versed in cracking. Back when they first started dating, her wearing her hair back like that was always a sign that she wanted him to make an attempt at it sometime during the day, a way for him to get riled up by having to look at it all day and for her to make it easy on him when he made his move.

But Rick clears his throat loudly as he finishes straightening out the collar of his jacket and slows to meet her. "You look..." she starts, but cuts herself off when she lets her eyes rove over him hungrily.

Rick stops, twirling his car keys around one finger down by his side. "Not as sweaty and gross as I do normally?" He jokes, mostly to himself.

Kate's smile brightens, the smile she gives him when silently laughing with him, as she shakes her head. "I was going to say handsome, Castle." She says in a low tone, eyeing him with a smirk and a lidded gaze.

"Yeah, well," he points over to the car, "I was invited to speak at the college by one of Alexis's teachers about..." he shrugs, "writer's stuff. Plot, characters, themes."

"Really?" She asks, genuinely intrigued. Rick nods, tucking in the corners of his lips. He's usually not this civil with her, but she can't help but wonder if it's genuine or if he's just posturing because of what happened last night, wondering if acting like even more of a jerk toward her will only get her to push harder. "That open to the public?" She asks, at first in jest.

Rick chuckles to himself and smirks. "I'm lecturing to a group of college kids about plot development, Beckett. That's wouldn't exactly be the most exciting thing I've done in front of you."

With a hot flaring blush rising up her neck, Kate cranes her neck and tries to hide just how large her smile is getting. "I know," she shrugs meagerly, "it's just not too often I get to see you in your element, that's all." She says with a soft smile, looking back up at him.

Rick pinches his brow and shifts his weight. "What are you talking about? I used to write all the time when you were at the loft." He recalls.

"I know," Kate nods, "but..." she trails off in a light voice, looking away, "watching you write was always the quickest way to turn me on."

Rick freezes like a rock, watching her eye him almost mischievously, his stomach flip-flopping. He remembers early in their dating life when he'd be immersed in writing a scene between Nikki and Rook and have everything going from his head straight through the keys on his laptop with no effort when all of the sudden, he'd feel her arms start to snake around his neck from behind his office chair and her lips find the back of his ear. He'd shiver with ecstasy and there'd be a trail of smoke leading into his bedroom.

To think, if he hadn't forced himself to make the agreement that he writes alone, Tyson would never have been able to frame him.

Kate, remembering the exact same thing he is judging by the look in his eyes, chuckles. "On second thought, it's probably for the best that I can't make it."

Flanking his defenses, Rick smiles and laughs under his breath at her joke. When he realizes it, he knows it's too late to pull it back without looking like a moron. "I uh..." he starts, giving her a nod, "I should probably go. I'm already running late."

Hoping he's not thinking, Kate reaches her hand out to hand him his coffee and her heart skips when he takes it, giving her a quick nod before making a quick dash into his garage.

* * *

"How do you go about, say..." the brunette student in the second row of the auditorium asks him, "working the plot in a way to keep the reader entertained, if..." she grimaces at her question, "if that makes any sense."

Rick smiles and adjusts himself as he leans back against the folding table at the center stage in front of the seating. "I'm going to tell you three different stories," he starts with a smile, "and what I want you to do is tell me which one is the most interesting." He says, pulling his hand out of his pocket. "Be honest, now."

The girl smiles and twirls her pen around her finger.

"When I was a kid, my school had a dress code that required us to wear a belt. So I wore one." He says, shrugging his shoulders. "Is that story interesting?" He asks the class before looking back to the girl that asked the question. When she shakes her head with a nervous smile, he nods. "No, I followed the rules, how is that interesting? Okay, what about this?" He raises his brow. "When I was a kid, my school had a dress code that said we had to wear a belt, so one day, I didn't." He eyes the class again. "Is that story any more interesting?" When the class starts to shake their heads, he nods. "Of course not, I broke the rules, who doesn't?"

"Right," the girl chuckles, eyeing the boy sitting next to her.

"Okay, last story." He says, waving his hand out, feeling Alexis's eyes on him from the third row, smiling at her dad proudly. "When I was a kid, I was sent to a private school where the dress code was 'if your pants have belt loops, you must wear a belt'. So, one day before class, I took a pair of scissors and I cut off all my belt loops." When a round of soft chuckles comes from the class, he looks back to the girl who asked the question. "Is that story any more interesting?"

The girl smiles and nods. "Yeah."

"See, that's what a good plot does." He explains, leaning off the table and pacing around in front of the class. "A plot will set up a list of rules. You as the writer, your job is to not break them, but not follow them either. A good plot will set up rules and cleverly weave around them. A writer following the rules they set up will leave the reader bored, but the writer breaking the rules they set up will leave the reader not believing you."

"So," another girl chimes in from the other side, while Rick's eyes are going to the back of the auditorium where he sees the door open and a familiar face peek in, "your goal should be to subvert the reader's expectations?"

"It should be a tool but not the goal. Think of it as a basketball play. A fake-out will help you get to the ball to the basket, but it's not what gets you the two points at the buzzer."

"You spoke earlier about," another girl starts asking from the other side, "having a goal in mind for your characters. Would mean that every character in the story has to have a goal?"

"No," Rick shakes his head casually and gives her a shrug, "but you don't want to leave them without purpose. They don't necessarily have to serve their own individual goal in the story, but each character should at least serve some purpose in getting the main character to the end goal of the story."

"You got an analogy for that one?" One of the male students asks with a smirk.

Rick grins. "You can have as many tug boats guiding the Titanic out to sea as you want, just make sure not to bring them along for the part where the ship sinks."

When a sea of chuckles starts to sound from the class, Rick sees the teacher stand up from the corner seat. When she dismisses the class, thanks him for speaking, signals for the class to applaud, Rick smiles and gives the class a wave as they start to gather their books, bags, and laptops. He reaches behind him to take another drink from his coffee cup as Alexis maneuvers her way through the class with a bright smile.

"How'd I do?" He asks her opening his arms to her.

Alexis hugs him happily and proudly. "You were great, Dad."

Rick rubs his daughter on the back and pulls back. "Not embarrassing at all?" He asks as his visitor slowly paces to a stop near the end of the row with a smile directed straight at him.

"Not at all," Alexis smiles. "But I've got to run, I have another class to get to. See you at home?" She asks, quickly leaning up and pressing a quick, daughterly kiss on his cheek. With a smile, he watches her job out of the auditorium.

With most of the class gone, Rick looks over to Sierra, who's standing nearby in a pair of light blue jeans and a black v-neck t-shirt with a dark grey hooded cargo jacket, smiling her bright, toothy smile in his direction. "Aspiring writer?" He asks her, slowly turning to face her.

"Hmm?" She hums quickly, raising her brow. "Oh!" She smiles, "No, I was just grabbing lunch nearby when I saw the poster." She points behind her. "I thought I'd drop in and see you." Rick can feel a bit of a flush rising up his neck. Sierra's eyes widen and her lips pucker out. "Not that... not that I wanted to see you or didn't want to see you. I mean, it's great seeing you again so it's not like it's not that I wanted to see you again but..." she rattles off quickly before shaking her head and smiling brightly at him, "it's... great to see you again." She says softly.

Rick smiles and tucks his hand back into his pocket. "And I'm not even falling out of any trees this time."

Sierra's smile engulfs her features, her eyes seeming to light up when she laughs. As he watches her, trying not to pay attention too closely, he feels a certain air fill his lungs. A kind he hasn't felt in a long time. It's something entirely different than it is with Beckett. He'd never felt what it was with Beckett before. But this... he's felt before.

"Well, I thought it was doctor's orders that you avoid falling out of trees, Mr. Castle." She says with a smirk, quirking one side of her brow. She is really pretty, after all.

"Avoid, not stop." He shrugs casually, making her chuckle again. "And besides, you're only a doctor for dead people and according to professionals, I'm not dead yet."

"No, you're..." she trails off, her eyes going up and down his form, "most definitely alive, very... alive, so... out of my jurisdiction."

He has a quip on his tongue, but swallows it, deciding upon something neutral. "So, what brings you to OSU? This your alma mater?"

Sierra's blue eyes widen largely and she looks over her shoulder. "Actually," she whispers, leaning in close, "I went to U of O."

Rick leans in close, whispering back, "Why did you whisper?" He asks before he remembers, leaning back and nodding, "_Oh _right, the uh... the civil war thing."

Sierra narrows her eyes with a mischievous smile. "I'm the Duck, Cecilia's the... the Beaver fan." She says, her voice lowering.

Rick nods, a clench closing up his throat. He has to move on. It was easy to tell himself that he had, but her demanding from him that he tell her... he can't keep punishing himself by staying so fixated on some fantasy he has spun in his head. Maybe it's time he actually lives by what he actually says to her. "You know," he begins, taking a small, shuffling step forward, "Sierra," he says, knowing that saying her name will get to her, "if you wanted to know the ins and outs of what it's like being a writer, I'd be willing to share my knowledge with you, on... one condition, of course."

He can tell Sierra is fighting her face splitting smile. "It's nothing weird, is it? I mean, I see a lot of gross stuff but... you know, they're usually dead, so..."

Rick smirks softly, "You re-open that offer you extended for dinner."

* * *

_A/N: Bring on the rage reviews! *Puts shield up and lowers faceguard* _


	17. Chapter 17

Checking her watch just before she fastens it to her wrist, she's right on time. In her bedroom that's adjacent to her father's and right across the hall from the bathroom, she goes to her closet and pulls out her denim jacket and pulls it on over her work shirt, tugging her hair out and moving out the door as she pulls it back into a ponytail with the tie on her wrist.

It was short, but she felt that yesterday was a big step forward for them. Just a quick quip about how she always found it very sexy when she'd see him writing and drag him back into bed. He was always so easy to intice into bed, especially when they first got together and they'd spend their time wasting the day away at home while she was on suspension. She always thought that that was why she took it so hard when he tossed her off that night. Looking back on it now, after finding out he'd had his trust violated by the woman he'd loved in the past before, she regrets taking it as hard as she did and letting him worry.

As she quickly darts through the house, turning out the lights on her way through the kitchen to grab her car keys, she consciously doesn't shake the thought of him in agonizing distress while she was protecting Vaughn, deciding as she moves through the house to live with it, a form of self-punishment.

She pulls her Impala out of the driveway, starts down Argyle street toward town, waves to the elderly woman near the end of the street who's watering her garden as she does every morning, and makes it to the coffee shop at the same time she usually does. Kate parks her car and goes inside, smiling at Beth welcomingly as she starts premeditating her order by punching it into the touchpad when she sees her.

"Morning, Kate," Beth greets her, same as every morning.

Kate smiles and hands Beth a ten, "Morning."

They meet eyes for a moment as Beth takes the bill from her. When Kate looks away to put her wallet back in her pocket, she feels grateful in the moment. They both know that she was with Castle, both know who she is, know what the article says about her and how she demanded a payoff before skipping town, but they haven't pressed her, almost as if pretending it doesn't exist. "So," Beth starts as she hands Kate her change, smiling at another regular who's making their way out of the shop with their coffee, "if you don't mind my asking," she braces herself as she slips another three dollars in the tip jar, it was bound to happen eventually. "You really dated _Richard Castle?_" She asks, keeping her voice low.

Her heart gets heavy, but she forces a smile and nods. "Yep."

Beth seems to try and keep her excitement to a minimum, but fails when her schoolgirl, gitty smile overtakes her features and her eyes dilate. "Really?" Kate only responds with another forced, affirming smile with the corners of her mouth tucked in and a firm nod, looking back down to the floor. "Was it serious?"

"Yes." She says firmly, confidently, and quickly, almost cutting Beth off with her answer. She let herself doubt him and doubt their relationship once, and she failed that test, not believing in what they had. She's not failing that test again. Kate holds Beth startled gaze, frightened at her sudden reaction. "It was very serious."

Kate eyes Beth for a second before pulling her phone out to try and end the conversation, seeing Beth give herself a nod. "So you two aren't together anymore?" She asks quickly, seeming to want to get the question out as quickly as she can.

Kate clenches her jaw, impatience rising in her, and looks up. "Are you asking for permission or do you honestly want to know?" She asks in a harsh, low voice.

Beth shrinks back in the stool, shaking her head and lifting her hand to her. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to mettle or anything. I'm..." she says, and Kate quickly remembers how intimidating she can come off as to some people. "I'm really sorry."

Kate gives her a dismissive smile and shakes her head. "To be frank," she says, waving her phone around in front of her, "I'm out here because breaking up with him was a mistake... and I'm trying to fix it."

Beth swoons, placing her hand over her chest and smiling an emotionally laden smile, just before the door to the coffee shop opens. Kate looks over her shoulder to see the familiar blonde stroll through, almost putting in a dance into her step as she comes in. In a pair of dark pink scrubs with her shoulder back hanging from her elbow, she has an almost sated smile shining across her face as she moves her arms and practically dances up to the counter.

Kate's seen her come in from time to time. She seems like a nice, happy-go-lucky sort. No dark past or emotional turmoil haunting her. It's strange for her when she meets people like that. "You're awfully happy for being late to work again, Sierra." Beth says to her as the woman dances away from Barbra after handing her the travel mug.

Kate takes a large step back toward the window to give her space to pay and looks back down to her phone. She watches out of the corner of her eye as the woman does a three-sixty spin around on one foot before bouncing her step over to the register. The woman stops and leans over the counter to Beth, reaching her arm out over the register and pointing her finger at her. "That's because I have a date," she says before poking Beth in the shoulder and giving her a surprised expression of a fully raised brow, widened eyes, and lips puckered out in the shape of an O.

As Sierra seems to let the dance fall and starts to giggle nervously, Beth smiles. "Really? With who?"

"Oh," Sierra starts, sashaying away from the counter, swinging her arms, "only the town celebrity and..." Kate feels her own throat start to choke her, her heart turning into a hot, shriveled raisin, looking up to the woman with a clear heartbreak showing in her expression, "the most gorgeous guy this side of the Willamette, Richard Castle."

Kate can see Beth move her eyes over to her before slipping off the stool and raising her hand to Sierra. "Si..." She starts softly.

"I can't _believe _it!" Sierra starts excitedly. "I mean, one minute I was making a fool of myself in front of him and the next minute he's asking me out to dinner!" She exclaims.

_He asked her? _She thinks to herself, the back of her eyes burning. If this what is what he truly felt like when she was with Vaughn, he not only went through hell and back and never said anything to her, but took it on himself.

"Beth, I need your help picking something to wear." She says with a nervousness tightening her breath, almost panting. "Cece's taste is too soccer mom now that she's pregnant and you're my only friend with more clothes than I have." She says quicker than Kate can think. "I mean, is he a leg guy? Do I go strapless? Should I break the fingertips rule if I wear a dress?"

"Sierra!" Beth exclaims, clearly not wanting to make that much of a scene.

"What?" She asks, casually shrugging her shoulders as she realizes she's out of breath, pinching her brow.

Kate, pretending she's not in the room, looks down to her phone but feels all sets of eyes go to her. "Just... stop." Beth says in a low voice, "Okay?"

"Kate?" Barbra calls for her from the other end of the counter. Kate locks her phone, slips it back into her jacket pocket, and steps around Sierra to grab her coffee.

"Thanks," she mutters as she grabs the two cups. As she's making her way out of the shop, she can see Sierra follow her with her eyes, making it no secret that she's watching by turning her head with her. When she gets back to her car, Kate looks back into the coffee shop while turning the key, seeing Beth talk to Sierra with a serious expression on her face.

* * *

She feels... broken.

All she can think of is that woman, hanging herself all over him, fawning all over him as much as she can, touching him in the soft, sensual ways that she loves to. It's like there's a poisonous knife sticking in her gut, infecting the rest of her body. As Kate pushes open the door to her Impala, that suddenly feels a lot heavier, she grabs the two cups from the holder and starts to drag her feet across his lawn, where Sasha is waiting for her wagging her wail with excitement at first.

When Kate makes it close enough, she sees Sasha stop wagging her tail and dip her head down, eyeing her as she slowly starts to approach her. Kate smiles heavily as she sets the cups down on the table and sits down. "Hey, girl," she mumbles.

Sasha whimpers and jumps up to put her hind legs up in Kate's lap, sniffing her face letting out a soft whimper before smashing her head into Kate's neck. She giggles heavily as Sasha jumps up into Kate's lap all the way, awkwardly settling her large frame over Kate's body and moving her head onto her shoulder. All she can do is wrap her arms around the German Shepard Border Collie mix. And it only takes a moment for Kate to start to lose the battle with her emotions.

After only a few seconds, Kate buries her face in Sasha's fur, running her fingers along Sasha's ribcage hidden under her fur. After a few minutes, images still violating her subconscious, she catches sight of him in a grey tank top and blue gym pants, stretching as he comes out of the woods.

When Rick looks up and sees Sasha sitting all the way in Kate's lap with her head laid down on her shoulder, with Kate having to wrap her arms around her, he feels a surprised smile form on his face. Kate's probably annoyed but humoring Sasha until he comes back.

"This is new," he says as he approaches them.

But he's caught off guard for a moment when Sasha lifts her head off Kate's shoulder, looking over to him, whimpering, and wagging her wail only once before putting her head back down on Kate's shoulder. "Come on, Sasha," Kate starts, patting the dog on the back and scratching her ears. Sasha complies slowly and jumps off her lap but settles quickly for sitting at Kate's feet with her head resting on her thigh, with Kate softly running her fingers along the top of her head.

Rick looks between the two for a moment before leaning back in the chair and grabbing the cup that sits on his side. "Everything okay?" He asks her, keeping his voice low.

Kate looks over to him, her heart healed in the moment by the soft, caring look in his eyes, and smiles heavily. She only decides on the smile in the moment, not wanting to lie to him. "Rick, I'm..." she starts, shaking her head and looking over to him, her heart tearing itself open to him. "I'm _so _sorry about what happened with Vaughn."

Rick pinches his brow for a moment, confused as to what brought her thinking about this. "Beckett-"

"I never should have let you worry, Castle. I'm sorry." She pleads. "I never should have let you believe I would ever cheat on you because I _never _would." She cries, tears forming in her eyes, more out of the pain she's feeling. "I could never betray you like that, and if you think I'm like her and I have no problem cheating on the man I love, I want you to know that I could never do that to you." She says with emotion laden in her every word. She looks over to him, seeing his brow furrowing with confusion. "It's my fault, and I never should have put you through that, I'm sorry." She says, looking down to Sasha, who still has her head resting on Kate's leg.

Rick slowly sets his cup back down and stands up. "What do you mean..." he starts in a low voice, "you're not like her?"

Kate looks up to him with rimmed eyes, knowing what she said. "Why couldn't you just tell me?" She asks in a tight voice.

Rick shifts his weight, clenching his jaw. "Tell you what? I don't know what you're talking about." He tries to shoot her off.

But Kate just stands up, and slowly moves around Sasha to stand in front of him. "Yes, you do." She challenges. "I'm not going to force you to tell me, Rick." She shakes her head in a soft, slow motion. When he doesn't respond, she has hope that he will tell her at some point. "And if you're worried about what I think you're worrying about, then I also want you to think about all the things you've pried out of me over the years." She tells him, looking him in the eye. "And think about if any of it made you stop loving me."

When she locks with his gaze, she smiles heavily and turns away to make for her car. She swallows passed the thick lump in her throat that is her heart and starts across his lawn.

"Kyra had left," he stops when her feet hit the driveway.

She whips back around to see his armor had shed from his expression, and he's looking down to the ground.

He lifts his arm up for a second before looking up to her. "You know me, I'm a writer." He shrugs. "We tend to be hopelessly romantic dreamers, so I thought Kyra was the one. But after she left for London without saying anything, it... was a hard pill to swallow to realize that the downside of being a hopelessly romantic dreamer is that it's usually just a dream... and that's when I met Meredith."

Kate stays silent and turns to start slowly pacing back toward him.

"Now," he starts, "don't get me wrong. I knew exactly who she was when we started seeing each other. It's not like she ensnared me or anything."

Kate breathes out a hard breath, "Hard to believe, honestly... knowing her."

"Well," he shrugs, "Meredith was always a lot smarter than she let on and with me... she always said that she liked me because I could see through the act she puts on. And when we got married and didn't exactly plan on having Alexis... she seemed to realize pretty quickly what letting the act go got her, and she decided that being a mother just wasn't all that important to her."

Kate nods to herself, "Her and Alexis don't exactly seem that close, so..."

Rick shakes his head, "I don't want you to think that she doesn't love Alexis, because she does. The only problem with her is that she just loves herself a lot more. I, on the other hand, loved being a father, and the only thing I loved more than being a father was who I was a father to and..." his eyes harden as he cranes his neck, "Meredith really didn't seem to understand how to cope with that. She just wasn't as invested in Alexis to the same extent I was so... when Alexis was four, I was picking her up from school when I heard over a car radio that Meredith was in Malibu when she was supposed to be in Vancouver. I rushed Alexis into the car and drove home to get on the phone, thinking something was wrong. But when I got home, there was a lawyer waiting at the door." He says, finally looking her in the eye. "And that's when I got served with divorce papers."

Kate breathes a shaky breath, imagining Alexis as a little girl, holding her father's hand as they go down the hall to the loft, the heartbroken look his eyes must've had when he read the papers, having to put it all behind some mask for his little girl.

"I went inside and told Alexis to go change out of her school uniform while I turned on the news and had to watch as the gossip news channels made a joke out of my wife cheating on me with the director of a movie she had wanted the lead part in." He says in a hard voice. "I was played as a bumbling buffoon who should have seen it coming while she was shown as just wanting to have some fun for a change."

With her heart still lodged in her throat, she feels herself want to break again. She'd never thought he could hide this much hurt under just a soft, boyish smirk.

"So," he says with a forced lift in his tone, giving her another shrug, "congratulations, you've now heard a Richard Castle story, never been told and based on true events." He quips at her and turns to head back inside.

"Rick." She says, as he steps away from her, her voice shaking.

Rick stops and turns to face her, his expression armored up and stone-faced again. Kate meets his gaze with emotionally honest eyes before stepping up to him again, stopping in front of him. She looks down to his chest, fighting with herself. If they were together, she'd kiss him again. She'd take his jaw softly in her hands and kiss him sensually, telling him with a soft, loving kiss, that he'll never have to worry about ever going through that with her.

But they're not, and that's not what he would need.

With her hands balling up into fists, she lets out a breath in a shaky sigh, ridding herself of tension as she decides and steps forward, putting herself into his form, wrapping her arms around his chest as tight as she can, and putting her head down on his shoulder. She feels him tense up as she hugs him, her fists balled up on his back. "Kate-"

She responds by squeezing him harder, flattening her hands on his back and pulling herself against him, not letting him go.

Feeling her arms viced around him, tighter than he ever remembers not just her holding him, but tighter than anyone ever holding him. It's not often he's the one offered comfort, support... or love. From Alexis, from his mother, sure. But they're easy to shake off as just of biologically bias opinion. When it's someone like Kate, putting her arms around him and not letting go, it's hard to just not think anything of. So after a moment, he slowly moves his arms around her shoulders, sliding his hands over the denim fabric of her jacket.

She squeezes his midsection another time when she feels his arms around her. This time, she's not thinking about what she's getting out of him, not thinking of what she's feeling from him, not thinking of the woman at the coffee shop or the lies they've told each other, the fights she knows they'll have to have or the arguments they'll have to get through. She's only thinking of him. She can only focus on giving him the comfort, love, and support that he needed back then.

And as Kate lets her eyes drift shut, squeezing him again, she decides in that moment to remember exactly what thinking this feels like.

Not thinking of herself, but only of him.

* * *

_A/N: Sorry for the delay. DLC in Borderlands just dropped. Merry Christmas, everybody. :]_

_Also, want to give a huge thank you to those who have followed, reviewed, and supported this story. I know it's slow going, and a lot of you may be getting frustrated, but I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, more scenes to write, and a lot more story to tell. Most reviewed work before this was Reaching, a story I am still the most proud of, with 400 reviews by chapter 15. This just reached over 500 with sixteen chapters, so thank you guys so much! Even those who have said they have stopped reading. I even thank you guys. _


	18. Chapter 18

It's late afternoon. Rick is sitting in his office looking over the sketches the contractor faxed him around noon of the plans he finally got around to drawing up for him. He plans on doing most of it himself, but he needs a professional just to sink in the posts. The rest he feels confident enough to do on his own. It's going to take time, but that's the point of any project like this. Just like his hand build brick barbeque he installed.

Sasha's head jolts off the loveseat next to his desk and Rick looks over to her just before he hears the rumble of an engine sounds up his driveway. He pinches his brow, knowing the sound of Alexis's car, and quickly gets up to look out the window of his office that's right above the garage. He looks out just in time to see Alexis slide out of the passanger side of her boyfriend's pick up truck with a smile.

He raises his brow as he watches him get out to meet her as she practically prances around the front with her shoulder bag from school and a big smile on her face. He wonders where her car is, why he drove her home, but with his black baseball cap under his brown hair and medium build, her boyfriend seems to smile softly when she meets him and Rick can see him stiffen lick a board when Alexis reaches over and grabs onto his hands.

Rick grabs the curtains and pulls them over to hide behind as they start to talk to each other. After a minute or two, he shakes his head in a small, stiff motion before Alexis seems to deflate her shoulders and lean forward, kissing him. Not wanting to spy any longer, Rick snaps at the curtains and turns back toward Sasha quickly, taking two large steps away from the window.

It's another few minutes before he hears the door open and he decides to go down and meet her. Followed by Sasha, who runs passed him as they go down the stairs, Alexis is greeted by the dog first and she leans down to love on her. "Hey, you." Alexis says to her.

"Hey, pumpkin," he says to her as he meets her at the entrance to the kitchen.

Alexis smiles as brightly as she can, "Hi, Daddy," she says and quickly leans up, giving him a loving peck on his cheek.

He smiles at her affection and moves into the kitchen. "I saw Ethan dropped you off. Is something wrong with your car?"

Alexis sighs and follows him into the kitchen, putting her bag on the edge of the counter as she sits down on one of the stools behind the island. "Yeah, I heard a whipping sound coming from the front, so I called him to look at it for me."

Rick gets the thought and turns around pulls open the fridge. "Whipping sound? Sounds like the-"

"Serpentine belt," Alexis says to him. Rick turns around to look at his daughter, surprised, cracking off the tin cap to a bottle of Pierre and sliding it across the surface of the island to her. Alexis shrugs and puts a hand around the bottle, smiling at him with her cheeks flushed. "He said he'd replace it for me on his lunch break so I can drive home tomorrow."

Rick smiles, glad his daughter seems to have met someone decent, doesn't seem to have any ulterior motives. "Well, that's nice of him." He says, his voice getting heavy.

While Alexis nods and sinks down into the counter, brushing her shoulder-length hair behind her ear and looking away, her mind seemingly lost in memories, he takes the time to get lost in memories of his own as he takes the first sip of his own sparkling water. His body has been wanting to tingle at the feeling of her arms around him again.

Nobody had ever hugged him that tightly before. It's not to often he's put in the position of being the one needing to be comforted. He can't say he likes the feeling. It made him feel weak and pitiful, especially in front of her. But she pulled it out of him. He'd never told what Meredith did to anybody, never repeated it out. He can't tell if it was cathartic or not yet. But feeling her arms viced around him, squeezing him as tight as she could until she wordlessly let go.

They've made love countless times, she's had her arms around him every one of them, but he's never felt her hug him like that.

But she found out somehow. "So, Beckett stopped by again this morning." He says casually, leaning against the counter opposite of his daughter.

Alexis looks up with her neck craned and blinks. "Did she do something?" She asks, probably wondering why he decided to bring it up when she knows she's been coming by every morning for almost three weeks.

Rick nods slowly, looking away and out through the French doors that look out to the lake. "You know, I always admired her for how good she was at her job." He says, still looking away. "How dedicated she was," he says, a lightness unclenching his lungs and a flutter wanting to butterfly around his heart before he squashes it. "But I've gotta hand it to her," he says casually and shifts his weight, "she really surprised me this morning."

Alexis's shoulders seem to tighten when he notices her posture stiffen out of the corner of his eye. "Oh?"

"Mmhmm," he hums, raising his brow and pursing his lips. "I always thought we had a bond to where we could just," he says, having the words in his head before they actually ring in his heart, "look in each other's eyes and know what the other was feeling..." he says, his mind having drifted off, "like we had our own world."

Alexis looks over the island to her dad, his eyes having almost glazed over. "Dad?"

He blinks rapidly, coming back to his senses. "But I never knew she was psychic."

He can see Alexis stiffen again. "What do you mean?" She asks in a small, nervous tone.

Rick shifts his weight again and slides the glass bottle of sparkling water away from him. "Alexis, did you tell Beckett about what happened between your mother and me?" When Alexis just looks away, never having been one to blatantly lie to her father, she gets a saddened look pulling at her features. "Alexis..." he sighs.

"Well, Dad..." she starts to defend herself, "I didn't really mean to, I-" she breaks off, letting out a heavy, sigh. When he looks back up to her, she continues. "I just went to talk to her after talking with my boyfriend and it just slipped out, but... but Dad, why is it so bad that she knows?"

"Because Alexis," he says in a firm voice, "what happened with me and your mother was very personal, okay?"

"But Dad," she argues again, "you wanted her to marry you."

In a pause, Rick dives in. "It's different now, Alexis." He says, only gaining a soft look from his daughter with her raised brow, silently calling him out. "I've moved on."

Alexis doesn't seem to give him a chance. "Then why are you so upset?" She fires at him. Rick leans off the counter and clenches his jaw. "If you've really moved on," Alexis starts again, sliding off the stool and moving around the counter, "then you wouldn't care what she knows, right?"

"Alexis, I've never told anyone that your mother had an affair." He tries.

Alexis seems to swallow thickly and eye him emotionally, "And you really expected things to work with Beckett?"

His lungs harden and he stares his daughter down for a moment, but all she does is raise her brow to his challenge. After a moment of her not backing down, his throat starts to close. "I just don't like talking about it." He tells her and turns away to lean against the edge of the island again, craning his neck slightly.

Alexis lets out a soft breath and he can see her shrug her shoulders meagerly. "I get why you won't talk about it around me, Dad." She says in a softer tone. "But you don't have to worry about poisoning me against Mom, she did that on her own." He can't respond to that, remembering that he made the effort both not to use his daughter as emotional tissue paper when Meredith left and to give Meredith a chance to be a mother if she ever chose to. "I know Mom doesn't like me, Dad, I don't really care."

He looks over to her, "She loves you, Alexis." He says reassuringly.

"She just loves herself a lot more." She shrugs. When Rick nods and looks back down to the counter, she continues. "But Dad, why is it so bad that Beckett knows things like that about you?"

"Because it's none of her business, Alexis." He throws off, a block of hardening ice forming around his lungs again. He'd never told anyone about Meredith, about what he felt or how the tabloids played him out to be the uncaring, dominating, lazy husband who didn't give his wife what she needed. But he also remembers telling her... like he would just tell her everything if she had just pressed him a little more. "But why are you of all people suddenly on Beckett's side on this?"

"Dad," Alexis emotionally fights back, "I'm on _your _side. I want you to be happy."

"I am happy, Alexis." He tries to defend himself.

"No, Dad, you're content. I want you to be _happy, _and I'm worried that if you don't at least confront how you feel about Beckett, you'll just get worse."

He shakes his head, surprised. "What? Alexis, what are you talking about get worse?"

She just eyes him again and seems to shore up her fight. "You think I didn't see what you were writing the other day, Dad?" His throat closes again. He hasn't touched that document on his laptop since he finished typing it. "Killing off Nikki Heat? You can't hate her that much."

"I've killed off characters before, Alexis."

"But Nikki Heat?" She challenges him. When he meets her eyes again, her brow furrows and she shakes her head. "Dad, you've said that you never liked that Beckett couldn't just be honest with you," when he nods, she continues, "but it sounds like you're lying to yourself." She says in a soft, nervous voice. Alexis has always been a meek person, compared to the other women in her bloodline at least. Seeing her like this, he's not sure how to handle it, and probably, judging by the sound of her voice, neither is she. "Can you really hold that much against her for not being honest with you when you're not even being honest with yourself?"

"Alexis," he starts in a hard tone, "I need to move on." He says seriously, turning to face her. "Whatever feelings I had for Beckett, I can't keep getting sucked in because of them. And after everything I put myself through for her, I thought you'd be happy that I'm not this time around, and that I have a date tomorrow night."

Alexis looks up to him with a curious gaze. "With who?"

Rick shakes his head and shrugs. "Cecelia's older sister, Sierra." He nods out behind her to motion to the neighbor's house across the street. "I met her a while ago when I was jogging and she stopped by the lecture I was giving at your school, so I asked her out." He says, putting his sparkling water to his lips.

Alexis nods and gives him a moment. "And... what's she like?"

He lets out a hard breath after he takes a small sip and puts the bottle back down. Maybe Alexis is right, probably more right than she thinks. "You know, with Beckett, I can't say I've ever felt what it was me and her had." He says, sounding like he's thinking out loud. "But what I can say... is that I've felt what it was with me and Sierra before."

Alexis takes a step closer to him, leaning against the counter next to him. "You have?" She asks and he nods, looking out into nowhere. "When?"

He looks over to her, "When I met your mother."

* * *

"Wait, _he _asked _her _out?!" Lanie sasses over the other end.

Kate sighs in the office chair in the office of the shop. "Yes, Lanie," she says, "and now I..." she shakes her head, looking down to her lap, "Lanie, I can't get them out of my head and they haven't even gone out yet."

"Well, what are you gonna do? Just let him prance her around in front of you?" Lanie asks her, the same attitude in her voice.

Kate rolls her eyes. "Lanie, I don't think that's why he's doing this."

"What else can it be, Kate? You remember that other little blonde _strumpet _he pranced around with before you two were together?"

Kate knits her brow, "Gina?"

"No, the other one, the-the-the-"

"The stewardess?" Kate finishes for her.

"Yeah, her. He didn't seem to have a problem flaunting her around, did he?"

"Lanie, that was different." She says with a soft shake of her head. "Back then, he was trying to prove something to me. This time, it's not like that."

"Well, how do you know?"

"Because he didn't tell me about it." She points out. "If he was going out of his way to hurt me by doing this, he would have told me about it, but he didn't say anything this morning."

"Well," Lanie starts, "if he's not showing her off... maybe he really has moved on." Her throat closes, not wanting to even think that. "Maybe he just doesn't want to tell you."

"No, Lanie, I can see in his eyes, he still loves me." She argues. "I know he still loves me."

"Then... what do you think he's doing? I mean, you know him better than anyone, probably."

Kate chuckles darkly, because the more she thinks about it, the more she thinks she doesn't even know him at all. She takes a pause while the light on the store phone starts to light up, telling her that there's a call. "Well, if he's not trying to prove to me that he's moved on... maybe he's trying to prove it to himself."

Lanie sighs softly on the other end. "If you want my advice, girl, I say let him go."

Kate draws in a thick breath, feeling her lungs shake. "But Lanie, I can't stand to even think about them together."

"If you're as sure as you sound about him still being in love with you," Lanie stops her, "then let him go out and prove it to you."

She swats away a stray tear and swallows her emotions, seeing the light on the office phone still light up with the call waiting. "Lane, I've gotta go."

"Okay, call me with the update, okay, Beckett?"

"I will," she smiles and ends the call on her cell phone and grabs for the receiver of the store phone in the same motion. "Crestfield Bait and Tackle, this is Kate." She says in as cheery a tone as she can muster.

"Kate Beckett?" An older, female voice says.

She pinches her brow and turns the chair into the desk, 'Yes?"

The woman chuckles softly, "I've got to admit, Kate, I wasn't expecting a greeting that happy-go-lucky from you."

"Um..." she says, taking a brief pause, "can I ask who this is?"

"I'm Claire Hanks." She says, almost matter-of-factly, like Kate should already know who it is.

"I'm sorry, Claire Hanks?" She asks.

The woman pauses on the other end of the line. "Your dad never mentioned me?"

Her lungs are gripped for a moment at that. "What?"

The woman chuckles softly, "I'm an old friend, Kate." She says reassuringly. "Your mother and I went through law school together."

"Uh... oh," she says, relaxing a bit back into the chair.

"I was afraid I had looked up the wrong place when I heard your voice." She says, seeming to smile with her tone. "I was wondering if I took a wrong turn in my headhunt."

Kate raises her brow to herself, "Headhunt?"

Claire chuckles on the other end of the line, "Well, Kate, once I got word from someone back in New York that you weren't at the NYPD anymore, I started making calls to get in touch with you, but you'd dropped off the grid."

AG's office requires its agents to keep a very low social profile. It's no surprise she was hard to track down. "I was just taking care of something for a while, that's all." She says.

"Well," Claire says casually, "now that I finally got a hold of you, I'd like to talk to you about something." Kate waits silently. "How would you like to come work for me?"

Kate slowly leans forward, taken by surprise. "I'm sorry?"

"See, Kate, your mother and I were very good friends." She says sincerely. "And," she chuckles, "don't tell him I said this but, I always thought your father was... well, anyway," she throws off. "I wanted to offer you a job to come work for me."

Kate chuckles to herself again. "Doing what, Ms. Hanks?"

"Well, it's a pretty big firm. And we're always looking for people with consulting abilities. I feel someone with your background could be a _very _valuable asset to us. And if you're anything like Jo, you might even give me a run for my money in court."

"Wait," she says breathlessly, "so you're a lawyer?"

Claire laughs softly, "Yes, Kate." She says in a soft tone. "I know you had a bit of pre-law in your time in college."

"Well, yeah but..." she trails off, "it was only one semester at Stanford. I'm no lawyer, Ms. Hanks. I was a cop."

"Kate, if I wanted some know-nothing lawyer fresh out of passing their Bar exam, I would have gotten one. I don't want a lawyer, Kate." She says seriously, and Kate can't help but feel the tone of the conversation shift. "Your mother was very proud of her work, Kate... just as you were. She took pride in what she did, and she was the best at it." Kate's heart gets incredibly heavy at that. The necklace around her neck suddenly feels heavy. "Just like you were, Kate."

"So..." she starts again, "what is it you're offering me?"

Claire takes a pause on the other end of the line. "I'm offering you a chance to follow in your mother's footsteps, Kate." Claire answers in a soft, too sincere voice for Kate not to believe her. "Even if you're half the woman Johanna was, that still makes you one of the best at what you do, and I have no doubt that you're a lot more than that. I'm offering you a chance to come work for me as a consultant at my law firm."

"That's..." she tries, "that's very generous but... I can't go back to law enforcement." She half-truths.

"We're a privately owned firm, Kate." She quickly reassures her. "_I _decide who I get to hire." She says strongly. "You could come work for me as a consultant, I could maybe talk you into taking up law again, and who knows?" She throws out casually. "We might even be able to find out what happened to your mother."

That makes her heart slam up into her throat, choking her.

Claire seems to pause, "After all, I heard about what happened the summer before last." She says in a heavy tone. "I'd hate to think that the people who did that to you would go unpunished."

"U-um..." she says in a shaky tone. "Ms. Hanks, I don't know what to say." She says, being honest, but a smile appearing on her face as she lets out a breath.

"Well," Claire seems to shrug, "you'll call me when you've decided then? I left a message earlier with my number where you can reach me."

Kate nods to herself, "Yes," she smiles, "I-I will." She says.

"It was a pleasure speaking with you, Kate." Claire says back, sounding honest. "It was almost like speaking to Jo again." She says, while Kate stays silent not knowing how to respond. "I'll talk to you later, Kate."

"Bye," Kate says in a breathless tone and slams down the receiver.

When the bell on the door chimes, she's brought back to the real world again, and quickly stands up and makes her way out of the office and out to the floor, where her dad is rounding the counter with a box of supplies to be stocked in his hands. "Hey, sweetie," he says contently.

"Dad," she says moving toward him while he pulls open the box and starts to unload jars onto one of the shelves behind the counter, "have you ever heard of someone named Claire Hanks?"

That gains his attention and he looks over to her with a surprised smile. "Claire? Yeah, she was your mother's maid of honor at our wedding." He said casually, shrugging his shoulders and going back to stocking the shelf. "Her and Claire were best friends going through law school. It's funny," he says, pausing in his work and looking ahead of him with a soft smile. "Your mother wanted her to be your godmother when she was still pregnant with you, but Claire was moving out to San Fransisco, so... we didn't really see the point."

"So," Kate starts, wanting to get back on track, "she's a real lawyer then? She's not some ambulance chaser?"

Her dad looks over to her with a soft smile, "Real lawyer?" He asks obviously. "Katie, she's the founding partner of one of the most prestigious law firms on the west coast."

That draws everything out of her. When Kate starts to feel her legs go numb, she reaches behind her to pull out another stool to sit down.

This is her shot. She could make a real difference again. She could really make a fight for justice that would be worth it.

She could go after Bracken.

"How'd you hear about her, anyway? I don't remember your mother ever talking about her." Jim says after a moment.

Kate shakes her head and lets out an almost amazed breath, feeling herself smile despite something in her heart telling her it's wrong. "She offered me a job."

* * *

_A/N: Sorry for the long hiatus. I'm just off work for the time being and am being lazy. Hope this made up for it. :]_


	19. Chapter 19

Kate bundles herself up against a chill the air seems to have as it whips her in the face. She curls arm around her stomach with her hand in the pocket of her leather jacket and moves her hand from gently running her nails down the top of Sasha's head to putting her hand in the thick fur just below her ears. Sasha lets out a deep groan as she sighs with her head laying dead on Kate's thigh. She smiles at the dog and goes about gently and slowly running her thumb down her snout just below her eye.

When the trees rustle loudly with the wind, she looks up and her eye catches sight of Harold out on the lake, who they quickly learned was a regular at the shop, just sitting in his boat thirty or so yards away from the shore. Harold looks up, puts his hand over his brow, then lifts his hand up in the air to her. Kate smiles and pulls her hand out of her pocket to wave back.

She reaches over and grabs onto her coffee cup that's resting on top of something else she brought, taking a sip that she lets sit inside of her mouth for a moment before swallowing. She'd completely forgotten that she'd ordered it those few days ago until it was sitting on the counter when she got home when her dad was making dinner for them. They had talked about it last night, but it never went beyond the point of 'she'll think about it'.

Her throat locks up, physically feeling like its choking her, as she reaches up to her neck and pulls on the chain.

She pulls at her necklace and then takes the two rings up in her palm, the single clear stone of her mother's ring sitting on the left and the bright, vibrant beautiful setting of the engagement ring on the right.

She has a chance.

She has a shot to end it. Claire runs one of the most powerful and prestigious law firms in the country. She'd have an army backing her if she went after Bracken. She wouldn't have to go about it the rogue cloak and dagger way she has been. She could use her position to drag him out into the light and expose him, make him face justice for murdering her mother. She could make her mother proud of her. Who knows who else she could help, what she could change, what difference she could make?

It hurts to swallow past the lump in her throat.

Her eyes well up with tears when all she can look at is the ring on the left. If she doesn't follow through with that, what has the first decade and more of her adult life meant?

Kate takes in a hard breath in one long draw and looks up, closing her fist on the rings. When she sees him coming out of the woods, dressed in a grey sleeveless hoodie, swinging his arms in wide motions to shake them out, she pulls at the collar of her work shirt and drops the rings back down her shirt. She tries to harden herself, knowing it's the only way she knows how to get rid of the emotions, and lifts up her cup to her lips again, looking nervously at the object sitting in the middle of the table just a few inches away from his cup.

When he gets close enough for Sasha to notice, she lifts her head off Kate's thigh, hitting her on the knee with the hair from her tail when she turns to welcome her master back home.

Rick reaches down with one hand and ruffles Sasha's ear while Kate tucks her hand back into the pocket of her jacket, looking up to him and waiting for him to notice the present sitting on the table.

It's when Rick moves to sit down next to her with the same heavy expression that his eyes catch the sight of the silver wrapping paper. It's medium sized, an inch and a half thick or so.

Kate feels her heart warm throughout her entire body when she sees the hint of that boyish, excited smile tease the corners of his lips and that excited, childlike wonderment sparkle come into his blue eyes. "Happy Birthday," she says softly.

Rick laughs to himself, a full smile forcing its way onto his face as he lets his neck crane and for a moment, it's as if this past year never happened. For just a split second, it's like nothing had been upended. He pulls back as much of his surprised smile as he can, managing a soft smirk as he moves to sit down. "I forgot that was today."

Kate smiles as she watches him intently, grabbing his coffee to take the first sip in front of her. Her heart flutters wildly when she sees it, at first because he doesn't seem to fight it, and lastly because of the way his jawline and the muscles on his neck tightened when he lifted the cup. With her throat locked up in a new way, she looks away slightly and brushes her hair back behind her ear. "Honestly," she starts, looking down to her cup that now sits resting in her lap in her hands, "I forgot about it too."

Rick looks over to her with a quirk in his brow, letting the cup down.

She smiles that smile she gives him when she wants to fight it but also knows it's a pointless fight before shaking her head. "I got that for you a few days ago and with everything going on lately, it slipped my mind until it came in the mail yesterday."

Rick nods, looks down to the present still sitting on the table, hesitating to ask. "I didn't think a bait and tackle shop would be that stressful of a job that you'd let things slip your mind."

She looks back over to him, pulling back the swell in her heart that she feels, realizing he seems honestly interested in talking to her. But when she locks eyes with him, she feels that swell crater heavily, making everything sink... and she knows that in that moment, he noticed. "Something came up, that's all."

"Oh?" He says, trying to be as mutual sounding as he can, shifting and adjusting his posture in his chair. "And... what's that?"

Kate shakes her head and smiles heavily, waving her hand at the present on the table. "Later, I promise. Go ahead and open it."

Rick looks over to her, taking her in for a moment before setting his cup back down to the table and reaching over to the present. He grabs onto it and feels that it has weight to it. He pulls it up and takes it in both hands, letting it fall into the other and letting his fingers test out the material under the wrapping paper. He'd know the feel of a hardcover anywhere. Feeling neutral to the situation, he pulls at the top of the wrapping paper and rips open the seem, pulling out the large blue hardcovered book.

When he has the wrapping paper off all the way, the first thing he notices is that it's an antique, judging from the slight well taken care of wear around the edges of the top and bottom, the gold inlay of the crest on the front cover having and E and an A designed into it. Curious, he turns the book to look at the spine. And when he reads the words _Poe's Works _in all golden capital letters at the top, followed by a Vol. 1 at the bottom, he feels the ice around his vanish.

Kate watches him closely as his expression softens in an instant, the hard line in his brow falling, his eyes lighting up with surprise and the stoic purse of his lips vanishing. "I figured," she flicks her hand, looking down to her lap, "you know, since you named yourself after him and all, he might be one of your favorites."

Rick lets out a short breath, feeling amazed as a smile sneaks back onto his face. "He is..." he says softly, turning the book back around gently to look at the front cover. "Beckett," he starts, looking up to her, "this looks like an antique."

Kate smiles to herself and gives him a nod, still looking down to her lap as she feels a cough rise in her throat. "First edition." She says right before covering her mouth with her sleeve and coughing a few times. She looks back over to him, seeing he's eyeing her with a surprised, a happily surprised, look. A look that tells her no one has ever bothered to do something like this for him before. "I would have gotten you all four volumes but someone sniped me out of the other three."

"Beckett, this has to run a couple hundred bucks." He says, raising the book.

"Hey," she says, changing her attitude, "you said you didn't care what I used that royalty money for." She says, jokingly challenging him. She meets his eyes again, seeing that another smile has snuck onto his face... the smile he'd always have when they'd gaze into each other's eyes, knowingly or not.

After a serenity falls over them, he's the first to end it by clearing his throat to himself and looking back down to the book. "Well um..." he starts, nervously shifting himself around again, "thank you, Beckett."

She nods to herself and looks down.

She has to tell him. Because this is her shot.

"Rick, I..." she trails off when she looks back over and sees him starting to crack open the front cover of the book. "No no no no, that's..."

When Rick opens the front of the hardcover as gently as he can, he feels everything in him lock up when a picture falls from the book's spine.

The picture's corner lands on his forearm and when he sees the picture, he's thrown around in a whiplash of memories at what he sees. The picture is of them at his birthday party the year before. She has the brightest, face splitting smile on and her hazel eyes are sparkling so bright as he's leaning in from the right of the frame with his lips pressed gingerly to her cheek. He's clearly struggling to kiss her fully with how much he's smiling.

His heart turns to a heavy rock in his chest and his brow arches and his throat closes. With one hand, he closes the book and slowly sets it down on the table, his emotional eyes never leaving the picture.

Kate sighs heavily and slumps forward a bit, brushing her hair behind her ear as she feels another small cough rise in her throat. "You weren't supposed to find that while I was here." She tells him and looks back over.

He's still staring at the picture, leaned forward on his forearms. He can't take his eyes off them. "No one had ever done anything like that for me before." He thinks out loud.

When she notices, she knows that she can't just throw this chance off. "It's funny," she starts, "the whole plan hinged on knowing how much you loved me."

He clenches his jaw at that, but doesn't look away.

"Just..." she starts after a moment, "knowing that you cared about me so much that you'd come running after me to rescue me and you'd..." her heart feels so heavy, a pull she's only ever felt toward him tugging at her, "hobble your way into the face of danger for me," she emotionally chuckles, "with nothing but the clothes on your back just because you loved me."

Rick's thumb reaches over and starts to absentmindedly pet the left side of the photo that shows her smile. He lets out a long breath to try and wrangle himself in, but he feels something on the back of the photo with his finger and turns it over. In black in, in the very center of the back of the photo, she has written '_Always, my love'. _

Kate watches his eyes find what she had written and feels her heart soften. She knows why she wrote that when she did. She'd found that picture among her things when they were moved here from New York and slipped inside, but that picture she'd printed out just a few days after his birthday. "I wrote that a couple days after your party when I printed out the picture."

He slowly looks over to her with an emotional vulnerability shining in his eyes.

And she smiles softly, looking back down to her lap. "I'd known for a while that I loved you, Rick, but..." she chuckles, "that night... it was the first time in my life that I'd ever felt _in _love with someone. That I felt that no one in the world could make me happier than you did on that night."

When she feels the words on her tongue, her decision is made.

"Well," Kate says, looking over to him with a smile, "I'd better get going." She stands, quickly, finally getting him to tear his eyes away from the picture. "My dad is probably wondering where I am by now."

Rick blinks rapidly, giving her a few stiff nods as he holds the picture gently, sitting upright in the chair with Sasha asleep at his feet. He can't say anything. His heart, his mind... she's left him more than speechless. She's left him thoughtless.

Kate smiles again and gives him a quick wave, "See you tomorrow?" She says as she starts making her way back to her car.

Rick just nods softly as she quickly makes her way back to the car.

As Kate slips down into the driver side of her Impala and starts the engine and pulls away down the street, she knows her decision is made, that her mind is made up.

Because she remembers how she felt that night. The smile in that picture wasn't just for her snapping a quick selfie of them. It was real. She was the happiest she'd ever been than ever before then on that night. And she wasn't after anything then. She didn't plot out the entire murder, get people to plant evidence and act out entire scenes, give him an entire case to solve because of anything she wanted out of it. She wasn't looking to get something out of doing all of that for him.

She did it because she wanted to see him happy, because she loved him.

* * *

It's just another ten minutes or so for her to make the trip around to the other side of the lake to the store.

Having finished the last of her coffee, she gets out of her car, her throat scratching a bit as she leans into her shoulder to cough a few more times, and drops the cup into the trashcan on the right side of the entrance. She pulls open the door and sees her dad checking out a customer of bait. "Thanks again."

"You too," the man says, grabs the container, and smiles at her when he turns.

Smiling in return, she pulls off her jacket and drapes it over her arm, quickly moving through the store to put it in the office. "Hey, Dad."

"Hey, sweetie," Jim says, closing the register. As Kate quickly moves into the office only a step to drop her jacket on top of the desk, Jim leans against the counter to talk to her as she quickly rushes out to the floor. "So," Jim starts casually, "how'd it go with Rick this morning?" He asks, knowing the situation. "Did you tell him about the job offer from Claire?"

Kate smiles knowingly and grabs a box from the stack that came in late last night that she didn't feel like unpacking in her mental state. "No."

She can feel her dad's eyes on her as he leans forward against the counter, staring her down from across the store.

She looks up as she grabs the box and hoists it over to the aisle closest to him, setting the box on the ground and pulling it open. "What?"

"Katie, I thought you said you weren't going to lie to him anymore."

"I'm not lying to him, Dad." She points out, almost annoyed.

"Well, have you at least made a decision?" Jim says, knowing she was conflicted about being conflicted the night before.

"Yes," Kate answers obviously, continuing to stock the shelf from her position of being knelt on the floor. "I'm staying." Jim raises his brow, happily surprised at his daughter. "I came out here to get Castle back and that's what I'm going to do."

"When did you make this decision, Katie? Last night, you were asking me if I knew about San Francisco's Bar exam."

Kate looks up to her father from the floor, giving him an obvious smile. "When I was talking to Castle this morning." She says quickly. She's thought about it on her way here. She can't tell him. He never once did that to her, she can't either.

"Well, Katie," Jim starts again, "if you made the decision while you two were talking this morning, why haven't you told him?"

"Because," she says as she stands up, taking the empty box with her in one hand, "he never did that to me. So I'm not going to either." She points out as if it's obvious, or as if it's obvious she doesn't want to get into it, and moves back to the corner of the store to get another box.

"What are you talking about? Shouldn't Rick know about this? Do you think he'll be mad at you?"

"Dad," she starts seriously and tosses the empty box on the ground, slumping her shoulders and turning to face him as he moves out from around the counter, "do you know how many things Castle has done for me over the years?" She asks him seriously. "From pulling me out of a burning building to... to paying a hundred thousand dollars of his own money at a chance of catching the person who murdered Mom to... to _all _of the times he's yanked me out of the way of bullets or _any _of the countless things he's done for me?" She eyes her father, wanting him to know how much Castle has done for her, with the point she's about to make. "And do you know how many times he held it over my head?"

All Jim can do is sigh and nod his head.

Kate lets out a breath to relax herself, still feeling that slight tickle in the back of her throat. "He never held anything he did for me over my head to try and guilt me into being with him and I'm not either." She says, grabbing another box to stock. "I want him to realize that he still loves me on his own and I'm not going to hold anything like me turning down a job offer over his head."

Jim nods again as he moves back behind the counter. "I'm proud of you, Katie."

Kate stops as she's knelt back down on the floor again. "For what?"

When she looks up to her dad, he's looking at her with his soft, humble smile. "I'm just proud of you, that's all."

* * *

_A/N: What'd ya think? Lemme know, as always. :]_


	20. Chapter 20

Rick takes in a breath, looking himself in the ill-lit bathroom since the lightbulb on the right side of the vanity burnt out while he was in the shower. He can't say to himself he should work out more. His jaw is more defined, his chest is more muscular, all the things that he loved to brag about are just clearer. He feels more healthy, sleeps better, has more energy than he ever remembers having since before Alexis was born, and now that he feels at his peak, it's been easy for him to keep it that way.

As he gives his bare chest one last once over, letting out all of his breath to make sure that the definition and result of almost ten months of intense weight lifting and even more intense cardio isn't just him sucking in his gut, he runs his palm down his jaw to make sure it feels smooth enough, smacks the lightswitch on his way out, and moves over to his closet where he grabs a dark blue silk polo shirt and snags a thin white t-shirt to wear underneath, pulls them both on, then grabs a black sportcoat with white and grey pinstripes.

After he slips on his shoes, he peaks back into the bathroom and flicks at his hair to haphazardly style part of his cowlick. He decides that he's finally finished getting ready, knowing that anything beyond this is stalling, and quickly makes for the door to head downstairs until his eyes find the top surface of the dresser. His heart clenches for only a moment but he stops the feeling quickly by reaching over, slapping his hand on top of the dresser, opens up his coat and slips the picture in the inside pocket.

Once he decides that there's not much more he can do, he decides to head downstairs to head out for his date. He gallops down the stairs, trying to force himself to feel excited about it all, even going as far as to push a smile halfway onto his face. He comes into the living room, where Alexis is sitting on the couch with Sasha in a large ball cuddled up next to her, Alexis on her phone.

"Hey, E?" She says, shortening her boyfriend's name down to a letter, smiling softly into her phone, "I'll call you back in a minute, okay? Thanks." She brings her phone back down to her lap before standing up and letting her phone fall into the crease of the cushions.

"So?" He asks, lifting his arms, presenting himself to his daughter for inspection. "Do I look okay?"

Alexis's smile seems to fade for a minute, but it's still there. "You look great, Dad." Rick smiles and nods, moving to the side table next to the door to grab his car keys. "You nervous?" She asks after a pause between them.

Rick chuckles under his breath, looking over his shoulder with a crooked brow. "I've been on first dates before, Alexis. I'm not nervous."

"Yeah," she mutters, craning her neck and looking down at the floor. "I know you have." Her voice is barely a murmur.

When Rick slides his keys into the pocket of his jeans, he looks back over to his daughter, noticing her behavior. "Alexis, I thought we settled this." He says on a sigh.

Alexis shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders in one short motion. "I want you to be happy, Dad." She says with an honest lift in her voice as she looks back up to him. He softens toward her, his defenses made up of both his smirk and fatherly domination over the situation ready to tell her to drop it. "I just know that I never saw you happier than when you were with Beckett."

Rick feels his heart want to sink into his stomach at her comment, but he shores him his emotional armor, feeling proud in the moment for being able to do it so quickly, and gives her a short motioned nod. "I was also more miserable than ever before when she left." He points out truthfully as he quickly moves passed her to wake up Sasha so he can feed her before he leaves. "Knowing her like I do, Alexis, she'll leave once she gets a better offer," just like everyone else usually does, he thinks to himself as he ruffles the top of Sasha's head to wake her up.

He can hear Alexis sigh deeply, hearing a slight edge of frustration in her breath, as he waits for Sasha to pull her head up from in between the cushions, which she's slow to do. "You know her better than I do, Dad, but," she says as he mods his head to gesture Sasha into the kitchen, "as long as your being honest."

"Don't worry, pumpkin." He says with a lightness in his tone, trying to reassure her as Sasha eagerly jumps off the couch once she realizes why she was woken up. "Besides, if I want my date with Sierra to go better than my first date with Beckett, I'm already late."

"I can feed her, Dad. Go ahead."

Rick smiles, deciding not to put up a fight, and quickly strides through the living room, placing a kiss on his daughter's cheek as he darts out the front door.

* * *

He remembers his first real date with her.

God, he was so nervous. He thought in the taxi that it would be the date that they'd both talk about forever because of how perfect and romantic it was. He'd brought her flowers before, she loved them every time. But he was so worried that she'd hate them, just because they were supposed to be keeping a low profile, and a bouquet of flowers wasn't exactly low profile. They got to the restaurant and it was just so awkward, sitting in complete, awkward silence with each other. It was just so awkward and wierd between them, knowing that they had an entire relationship to explore while forgetting they had an entire partnership to build off of.

They still ended up making love that night, but only after they dropped the pretense and just decided to share a laugh about it.

But as Rick pulls to a stop outside of her house just after six o'clock, right as the streetlights flick on, he just feels what he can only think of as emptiness. He's felt it before a lot, but wasn't as conscious of it as he is tonight. Sierra's a gorgeous, bright, easy-going, happy-go-lucky type of person. Not even like any of the women he used to let float around him in New York. She's not that smokey, sultry, seduction type that would be perfectly happy to be another notch on his bedpost just so they can say they were bedded by Richard Castle.

Maybe he's just overthinking things. Maybe that's his new vice, overthinking things, over analyzing things.

Shaking the cobwebbing clouding up his thoughts, he pushes open the door, grabs the flowers off the passenger seat, takes in a big breath of the cool air, rolls his shoulders back, smirks, and makes for the front door of the small one-story home painted white, a dark blue front door and blue shutters, a pair of shrubs on either side of the walkway that parallels the driveway that has a dark green sedan parked at the end. He can hear the TV as he approaches the front door and when he knocks, he can hear the faint sound of a bell start to ring.

"Coming!" A voice hollers from inside. "Coming, I'm coming, I'm..." Sierra's voice dies down as she approaches the door. The knob turns and the door starts to crack, and Rick can hear the high-pithced ringing of a small bell sound at the entrance. "No, no, Persius, no!" She says from behind the door. Rick looks down and sees a Siamese cat poking its head through to the outside. "We went over this, Persius." She says as the door opens.

Rick looks from the cat being taken up by its ribcage and looks at Sierra, who's in a simply designed red dress that comes about halfway down her shapely, athletically toned thighs, with a pair of red, open-toed two-inch heels on her feet. She has a thin, black half-sleeved sweater over her shoulders, her naturally wavy blond hair put back with a bobby pin, giving her already attractive face a model-esque glow that seems to show off her cheekbones and eyes.

Sierra holds her cat by its ribcage, holding him as far away from her as she can. "Siamese don't really shed that much," Rick points out, the flowers hanging by his side.

"I-I uh..." Sierra starts, turning around and taking a few steps with her cat still hanging from her hands, "I know, but why take a chance?" She says in a bright, happy, breathy voice. "Oh!" Sierra exclaims as the cat escapes from her grasp and climbs up her chest, looking over her shoulder and extending its neck out toward him, sniffing the air.

Rick smiles as the cat seems to want to inspect him, only because he's imagining Sasha casually walking up to the cat and push him over with her nose, sniffing her like its one of her new toys.

"Go!" She says, tossing the cat out through the living room. Sierra finally turns around and gives him a bright, nervous, face-splitting smile. "Hi."

Rick looks at her, wanting to drink in how she looks, because she looks beautiful. Her toned, slender, healthy figure, her attractive features, her light blue eyes and naturally happy looking smile, he just can't seem to muster up even faking feeling something for his own sake. "Hi," he says with a wave in his tone, handing her the bouquet while he speaks.

"Oohhh," Sierra almost coos as she reaches out and takes the pink and red flowers in her arms. "They're beautiful. You didn't have to do that." She says with a smile and an arched brow, turning back inside to set the flowers down.

Rick smiles, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He takes a few steps inside and stops, deciding to look around her simple yet tasteful decor while she disappears in the kitchen.

She returns a few minutes later, shaking her hands dry. "I can't remember the last time someone gave me flowers."

Rick meets her eyes and smirks. "I hope you weren't happy about that. Taking them back won't exactly make you forget about it." He quips casually.

"Oh, no!" She says happily. "I love them. They're beautiful." She waves behind her. "And," she starts with a shakey voice, her eyes hungrily roving over him, "you look..." she trails off with a deep sigh before she catches herself, clears her throat broadly, and shakes her head, smiling at him nervously. "You look great."

Rick smiles softly, understanding the pressure completely. "So do you."

Another smile engulfs Sierra's features, letting out a tight sigh that half resembles a laugh. "Thanks."

Rick gives her a moment. "Shall we go?"

* * *

"You don't really seem the type to have a divorce under their belt, Sierra." Rick says over a piece of chicken.

Sierra smiles softly, her nervousness and tension having slowly faded as their date went on. She shakes her head and waves her fork in front of herself. "Why, do I really give off that much of a 'house on a hill' vibe to you?"

Rick smiles, chuckling as he chews his food. "No, not at all. It's just you seem more of a..." he trails off, thinking of the right words, "one and done type of woman, that's all." He says, feeling his heart flutter when he feels his words on his tongue.

Sierra smiles heavily and leans against the edge of the table, picking at her meal with the tip of her fork. "No, it was my fault mostly." Rick stops, honestly at a loss, leaning back and letting his shoulders fall as he looks over to her. Sierra seems to notice and flicks her eyes over to him. "What?" She asks with a smile.

"No, it's nothing," he shakes his head. "It's just I've been divorced twice and both of my ex-wives still blame me."

She smiles again, giving him a few nods and sets her fork down. "Well, I was the one that said yes when he asked me. I..." she trails off, looking away and moving her hands off the table and to her lap, "I wanted that big fantasy wedding and he... well, he just figured that that's what we were supposed to do after being together for as long as we were. Cut to... eloping to a courthouse in Eugene and spending our honeymoon the nearest motel we could find." She says in a heavy voice.

Rick nods, understanding the temptation. "Why'd it end?" He asks sincerely.

Sierra shrugs her shoulders and leans back in the booth. "I realized I agreed to marry someone I didn't really know."

Rick nods, having heard it before. The old 'he just changed' routine. "So, he changed?" He asks, testing the waters.

But she surprises him by shaking her head. "No, he didn't change." She says, looking him in the eye. "That's kind of why I said it was my fault." She says with a soft yet heavy smile. "He was the same person he was when we were dating, I just... didn't want to see it at the time. I didn't put in the effort to really get to know him I should have."

Rick nods, getting a thick sense of guilt slide through his system for having made the assumption. "It sounds like you take too much of it on yourself."

She nods back, her smile never leaving her features fully, just changing in degree. "That almost sounds like experience talking."

"Well, please don't think I asked you to dinner to give you divorce tips."

"No, I didn't mean to bring you down or anything." She says apologetically, sitting upright and leaning in over the table.

"No, it's alright." Rick says casually, shrugging his shoulders as he reaches for his glass of water. "It's just you're..." he lets his words fall, looking over to her and catching her eye.

Her eyes seem to sparkle with excitement and her smile pulls at the corners of her lips again. "I'm... what? It's nothing bad is it?"

Rick takes a pause, leaning back against the booth and smiling softly. It's not too often that he has a conversation with someone where he doesn't have to worry about being judged or studied. It feels like a different experience talking with her. He can't tell if it's just her naturally exuberant personality or just how nothing she says is laced with something that's meant to get him. "You're easy to talk to."

* * *

After they'd left the restaurant, Rick decided to steer them away from ending the night by offering to just walk through the park nearby. "So," Sierra starts after a few more feet of silence, the conversation having faded after she'd said all she had to about herself, "how do you like it here so far?"

Rick slowly strolls next to her, his hands hanging from his pockets. "I like it." He starts, looking over to her. She raises her brow, gesturing for him to continue. "Everybody here's just a lot more..." he trails off, looking around the mostly empty park and quiet streets of Crestfield, eventually looking back over to her, "human."

"New York really lives up to the whole mouse utopia experiment thing then, huh?"

Rick laughs under his breath, "You don't like the city?"

She shakes her head naively, "It's never really appealed to me. When you grow up in a cul-de-sac in a small town like Crestfield, a place like New York just seems too... crowded."

"Hmm," Rick hums on another chuckle, "It was a little weird whenever I first moved out here and a total stranger waved to me as I drove by."

"Ha," she laughs brightly, "yeah, I bet that was weird." She agrees, Rick soon feeling another pause in the conversation. "But uh," she seems to catch it, "not as weird as being considered the town celebrity must be, I bet."

He looks over to her with a casual smirk and quirk in his brow. "Town celebrity?"

"Oh, yeah!" She exclaims, leaning over and bumping his shoulder. "I mean, you're _the _Richard Castle!" She waves at him. "It was all I could do to contain myself when Cece told me that she saw you move in across the street." Rick's soft smile suddenly feels weighted. "And here I am," she continues in the same amazed tone, "out on a date with you, _the _Richard Castle."

Rick nods with her, mostly out of courtesy. That's what drew him to her. In a sea of women that just fell and fawned over him, who faked and feigned their way to his side, she stood back and challenged him, didn't care who or what he was. He couldn't just wave a marker in the air as an offer to sign anywhere or anything she had on her to get what he wanted. It's not that she demanded something more real from him, it's that he made himself into something more real for her, that she challenged him to take a more real look at the world and treat it like something that he can't just make better in his books, treat himself as someone who can't just skate through things by making himself into another version of himself by writing it.

To himself, Rick breathes a hard breath that almost resembles a chuckle. "I guess I'm not really used to making that much of an impact."

"Well, believe me, you do." Sierra continues on, only making Rick withdraw into his thoughts even further. "You should just hear how Beth and Barb..." she stops, seeming to swallow her words suddenly. He catches it and pulls his eyes off the sidewalk, looking over to her and seeing she's eyeing him widely, her shoulders tight and tense.

"Who's Beth?" He asks, trying not to sound overbearing or threatening, but he stops and turns to face her with his hands still hanging from his pockets.

Her eyes dart back and forth, eventually landing on him as her brow arches again. "Beth and Barbra, we grew up together." She quickly explains with one of her nervous smiles. "They run the coffee shop just a few blocks over and..." Rick lets her continue, staying silent and deciding that saying anything would just press her too far. "I... may have went in a few days ago and I may have gloated a bit about you asking me out and they..." she takes a pause, drawing in a long breath and letting her shoulders deflate, "may have explained that your ex-girlfriend and partner from the NYPD moved to town to get you back and that she still has feelings for you and I may have looked it up and saw that she inspired Nikki Heat and that you dedicated books to her and I just-"

Rick takes his hand out of his pocket to motion for her to stop so he can explain, but she's already off.

"Oh, Rick, I'm sorry!" She practically pleads, hanging her arms low and slouching her shoulders. "I should have broken the date when Beth told me how serious you two were and that she brings you coffee every morning, but you're just such a great guy and- _oh,_ I'm a terrible, awful, selfish, self-centered, cold, shallow, heartless, thoughtless, terrible person, aren't I? I'm sorry. You're just..." she lets out a sigh, looking back up to him, "you're _the _Richard Castle!" She exclaims again, pausing before she meets his eyes again. "I hope you can forgive me."

"No, no," he lifts his hand finally, shaking his head and giving her a soft expression. "It's not you're fault, Sierra." He says, taking a step forward and putting his hand back in his pocket. "If anything, you should probably blame me."

"No, Rick, when I heard about her, I-"

"Look," he stops her, his heart feeling heavy. "The truth is, Sierra," he tells her in as heavy a voice as his heart feels, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders, "when I asked you to dinner, it was..."

She clasps her hands together in front of her, eyeing him for the first time all night without a smile. "It was... what?"

He swallows his regret and knows there's no other way he can tell her. "I moved out here to get over her after she'd stood me up when I was going to ask her to marry me." He says quickly, his tone heavy. When he looks back over to her, he sees that she doesn't look hurt or betrayed. She's just looking at him, almost as if she's just waiting to understand. "Suffice it to say, she..."

"Broke your heart," she finishes for him.

Rick nods, giving her a soft, thankful smile for saving him from saying it. "I thought I was over her and thought I was ready to forget about that part of my life. I thought that I'd moved on." He shrugs his shoulders, Sierra's natural softness and nonjudgemental nature getting the better of him. "But she showed up and I felt..."

She gives him a reassuring nod, her soft natural smile reappearing on her face. "You felt the need to prove it to her."

He looks away from her, feeling his heart clench in his throat as the picture in his breast pocket starts to feel like it's burning a hole through the fabric. He slowly takes his hand out of the pocket of his jeans and reaches in, taking out the picture she'd given him that morning, and feels his throat close and a smile want to sneak around his defenses when he sees her bright, beautiful, face-engulfing smile that she has in the picture. Only taking a second to look, he can't help but notice the tightening of his stomach and the intense flutter and the electrifying of his blood when he sees her smile.

It's just something that's starkly absent here, despite how beautiful and understanding Sierra is.

Rick can feel Sierra's eyes on him as he looks away again and hands her the picture. He watches out of the corner of his eye guiltily, seeing her look at the picture. "It was more to prove it to myself, actually."

Surprisingly, he notices that she doesn't look hurt as she looks at the photo. She just starts smiling happily. "You two look adorable."

"Sierra, I'm so sorry." He says as honestly as he can, earning her gaze back from the picture. "I'm sorry I lead you on like this. Please, don't get me wrong, you're..." he motions to her, "you're really beautiful, you're really easy to talk to-"

"I'm just," she shrugs, letting the picture down, "not her, right?"

He can't answer that. He wanted to move on. He wanted to not have to be so deadset on it being her. He doesn't want to admit that he's so weak that he can't muster up the courage to just let her go.

"Rick," she calls over to him, trying to get him to look back over to her. When he does, she's just smiling softly. "If you asked me out to prove to yourself that you don't love her anymore, it's not going to work, I can tell you that." She says, her tone shifting, but still holding an undertone of understanding.

Being stubborn, Rick clenches his jaw. "What makes you say that?" He asks, short of just being childish and asking 'says who?'.

Sierra just smiles and lifts the photo up to him. "You want to prove to yourself that you moved on from her by going out on a date, but you bring a picture of you kissing her along with you?"

"Sierra, she left me for a job." He lets escape, Sierra's nature pulling it out of him. "I just..." he decides to cut himself off, closing his mouth and craning his neck. He just doesn't want to go back to being in last place.

"Listen, Rick," Sierra starts again, "I'm not going to say that I totally understand what you two had or what happened between you, but there is one thing I can tell you. It's something I found out when I saw you look at this picture and... you're probably not going to like hearing it."

He tries his damndest to harden himself, to shore up his emotional armor as he looks back up, stiffens his neck, and holds his breath. "And what's that?"

Sierra smiles again, lifts up the picture to show it to him before handing it to him, waiting for him to take it. "You're still in love with her."

* * *

_A/N: Not sure how I feel about this chapter.__ Tone seems off to me.__ Let me know what you think. Next chapter will have a lot more Castle and Beckett in it though. _


	21. Chapter 21

Rick keeps his normal pace, keeping his breathing steady. He went a little farther than normal, but passing the bench where he found Sasha, looking out to the lake and lifting his hand in a wave to the father and son out on the water fishing, he feels it was worth it. Maybe he'll sleep better tonight than he did last night. Maybe if he does a bit of intense weight lifting this afternoon, he won't toss and turn as much. Sasha is usually very content sleeping on her green afghan at the foot of his bed, but she discovered last night just how comfy her human's bed is when Rick called her up, thinking that having his faithful dog to cuddle up with might get him to sleep.

It did eventually, but it was one in the morning and he only got five hours of sleep before his body woke him up.

He sees the end of the tree line up ahead and feels his system give him a cautionary cold sweat running over his already sweat-stained skin. She's going to be waiting for him, probably petting Sasha as she is every morning, and he'll have to deal with yet another morning of his emotions warring with each other. An old, more emotionally battered version of himself that he thought he trained himself out of being telling him to just swallow his pride and his ego and his grudges, while his brain is telling him he trained himself out of being that person for a reason.

Rick stops running just a few feet from the end of the trail, his arms pumping from having gotten two more pull-ups than normal this morning, his legs tingling and his lungs pumping. Putting the back of his hand to his forehead, pushing the sweat out of his brow, he lethargically walks into his yard with his eyes down to the grass and one hand on his hip. His heard feeling an odd mix of flutter and stonewalled, he chances a glance up to the two chairs and table under the oak tree.

But he stops cold when he finds her seat empty, Sasha laying down in the grass flat on her side on the ground directly in front of it. Rick shakes his head to try and clear a quick flickering of thoughts and reaches into the pocket of his gym pants to grab his phone, checking the time. When he sees it's the same fifteen minutes before eight that it usually is when they meet, he locks his phone again and slips it back into his pocket.

He makes his way slowly over to the table, getting Sasha's attention once he's underneath the oak tree. "Hey, you," he talks to her, kneeling down in front of the table. Sasha slowly pushes herself up off the ground and walks over to her master, her long-haired stringy tail wagging slowly. He puts his hands in her fur as she sits down in front of him, leaning in to sniff his face. "She leave already?" He asks his dog, massaging the back of her German Shepard ears. "Huh?"

He breathes a hard sigh, wraps his arms around Sasha once to scratch her back and side, and stands up looking down the street, waiting a long few seconds.

_Every morning, I'll be right here... waiting for you,_ her words ring in his mind as he stares at her empty chair.

It's then that another kind of feeling slowly weaves its tentacles around his heart.

He bends down and unhooks Sasha from her lead, quickly ushering her back inside, then is in and out of the shower in a matter of twenty short minutes, is dressed in a pair of light blue jeans, a blue-white button-up with light blue pinstripes, and running shoes. Grabbing his keys off the side table next to the door, he kneels back down to Sasha, petting her face as she leans in to sniff at him again. "Be good."

He's out the door and is starting up his car, nothing in his mind even putting up a fight as to him doing this. She said, promised him, that she'd be here every morning. He wouldn't have believed her, even after everything he has said to her, that she'd keep showing up. He's scolded her, brushed her off, even yelled at her, but she still came back. And yesterday, it was probably the closest thing they've been to what they were before any of this happened.

He backs out of his driveway, hearing the tires squeal for a second as he shifts the car into drive. He drives a few miles down the street, slowly making his way away from the lake, and turns left into the suburbs, making a right turn onto Argyle after another few miles, and stops in front of the house he'd mentioned on the right, seeing a black Sebring parked in front of her silver Impala in the driveway. He parks on the curb and whips off his seatbelt, and jumps out of the car.

Bordering on running up to the door, he takes a few long breathes and reaches up, knocking on the door four times, feeling timid in the amount of force he used.

He stands nervously and worriedly on the step, his eyes down onto the plain brown-colored doormat, and waits with his heart palpitating almost awkwardly at the bottom of his throat. When the door finally opens after a long moment to himself, Rick looks up, expecting Beckett, but instead sees someone he wasn't expecting to meet.

"Rick?" Jim seems surprised, dressed in a pair of loose-fitting jeans and the same army green t-shirt she wears every morning.

Rick musters up as friendly a smile as he can, "Hi," sir, Mr. Beckett, guy, "... Jim." He says, feeling awkward.

"Uh..." Jim starts, seeming to hesitate to think of what to do for a moment before stepping aside, "come on in, please."

Rick would stop and explain, but Jim is already darting back inside through the living room and into the kitchen. Not feeling as in the right place as he should, Rick pushes his hands into his pockets and steps inside just enough to ease the door shut behind him, deciding to stay quiet until Jim addresses him again, and takes the opportunity to look around the house they'd rented for themselves.

It seems cozy. The living room is spacious and large enough for the two people that live here with a familiar grey couch on the left wall that he has fond memories from her apartment of, and an entertainment center on the wall to the right. Joining it is the kitchen in front, a small dinette set in the corner next to a sliding glass door that leads to the backyard, an island with two stools on one side and a stove, refrigerator, sink, and dishwasher taking up the opposite wall to the right. On the right is a hallway, probably leading to what he assumes are the bedrooms. Jim is in the kitchen, having just grabbed his keys.

"It's good to see you again, Rick." Jim says to him casually as he spins his keys on his finger before slipping them back into his pocket.

"Likewise, Jim," Rick says back with a forced smile. He can't tell if the guy hates him or not. Being a father, he would understand, but Beckett's dad has always been sort of an enigma to him. He knows how he would feel if Alexis's boyfriend did what he did, but also knows that Alexis wouldn't do what Beckett did to cause it. All he knows is he'd understand if Jim hated him. Most of his ex's parents did anyway.

Jim seems to notice the silence as Rick stands at the door with his hands tucked into his pockets. "Did you need something, son?"

Rick's heart is hit with an odd feeling at hearing Jim call him that. But he squelches it the best he can. "I was actually looking for Kate. Is she okay?" His tone sounds more honest than he wanted it to sound in his head.

Jim nods, "Yeah, Rick, she's fine." He waves at him dismissively. "I guess I just assumed she would have called or something to let you know." Jim says as he moves over to the coffee table to take up some papers. "That's why I was surprised to see you here."

"What happened, is everything okay?" He asks, his worry and concern still boiling over despite himself.

"Ah," Jim sighs as he stands back up, "she came down with the flu last night." It's then that his heart can finally unclench from his gut, knowing that at the very least she's okay... that she hadn't just left again. "I didn't want to leave her at the store alone last night, but she said she was fine. She took some aspirin last night for her headache, but I heard her up late last night throwing up." He explains in a heavy voice. And Rick can't help but feel his heart sink. "She's in bed now and I told her to take the day off."

"Well," Rick starts in a tight voice, "I just wanted to make sure she was okay."

When Rick starts to turn back to head out the door, Jim stops him. "It would mean a lot if I could stay and take care of her," Jim starts. Rick stops and turns back around to look at her father. "But I've really got to get back to the store before I'm missed and... not having Katie there today is going to make it tough."

Rick forces a nod, not wanting to get on any more of a bad side by telling him he just doesn't want to be here. "Jim..."

"I just..." he continues over him, "know that it would mean a lot to her," Jim says in a soft tone, looking Rick in the eye, "if someone were here with her." All Rick can do is stand there. Jim has a tone in his voice, a demeanor he carries himself with that Rick can't help but feel a certain weakness for. He gave up wanting to know who his real father was a long time ago, and what he got wasn't exactly what he wanted when he actually did meet him. "Katie never got sick too often and... to be honest, Johanna was usually the one to take care of her when she did, so... I'm not exactly sure what to do."

Rick looks away, feeling small. "Alexis got the flu for a few days just before she turned four." He says as if he's explaining himself.

Jim seems to smile. "It would really help me out, Rick."

After only a moment, Rick looks away and nods, but looks back up to meet Jim's eyes with a nervous smile when Jim steps back up in a rush, heading toward the door. Rick feels as if his normal alpha male stature is utterly meaningless in front of this man, feeling small and weak, which is odd when Jim steps up to him with a soft, humble smile and reaches out his hand and Rick notices that physically, he's almost twice Jim's size. But Rick shakes Jim's hand, returns his humble smile with a nervous smirk, and steps out of the way of the door.

"And please, make yourself at home, Rick." Jim says to him as he opens the door. "Anything in the fridge is up for grabs, the cable is all hooked up."

Rick smiles the best he can and shuffles toward the couch, facing him. "I'm fine."

Jim smiles again and looks down to his watch. "I should be back by eight o'clock."

Rick stays silent, only offering another nervous smile and a stiff-necked nod, only until Jim seems to decide to end the awkwardness between them by closing the door behind him and heading out, his shadow behind the drawn curtains over the front window moving by in a flash. Rick feels out of place, suddenly feeling as if the entire home is either booby-trapped or made out of glass, standing stiffly in one spot near the couch, slowly rotating around to look at things. After Rick, hears Jim pull out of the driveway and take off down the street, he cautiously moves over to the window and pulls open the curtains to let the morning light into the home.

He turns back around and practically tiptoes his way through the living room toward the kitchen, first going to the fridge and pulling open the door, taking a quick inventory of what he has to work with. No suitable orange or apple juice, a large bottle of smart water on the top shelf, some chicken breasts in the freezer that he quickly migrates to the sink turning on the water to run over for a minute. When he spots a small cardboard can, he shrugs his shoulders, thinking he could always replace what he takes, and snatches up the cinnamon rolls from the door.

After about twenty minutes if quietly pattering around the kitchen, checking what cooking supplies he had to work with in the way of spices, herbs, vegetables, and after preparing the cinnamon rolls for himself that were just past their expiration date anyway, he hears the oven ding, reminding him that it was preheated. He quickly turns around and opens the door, feeling the heat wash his face in one hard breeze, and puts the baking dish inside.

While he's pressing the buttons on the stove timer, he hears the floor at the far end of the hallway he has yet to explore creak with movement, followed by the slow sound of a door being pulled open. He quickly reminds himself of the situation, shoring up his emotional armor into the same cold, unfeeling demeanor he's put on with her as he hears her come down the hallway.

"Dad?" She calls out in a weak, raspy, annoyed voice. "Dad, what are you doing here?" She slurs. "You're supposed to be at the..." He hears her words fall and Rick looks up and over his shoulder from the island to where she's standing at the entrance into the kitchen.

But what he sees is enough to make him forget what all that emotional armor was even for, and the sight only lasts a few seconds. Standing at the edge of the grey carpet, is Kate, her face tired and makeup free, her hair slept on and unkempt, hanging tiredly by a loose, meaningless ball in a hair tie, clad in a pair of baggy, faded pink pajama bottoms that are hungover and balled up at her bare feet, a worn, faded white robe that's left open, and lastly, something that makes his heart flutter painfully. Underneath the robe, she has on a very familiar-looking grey flannel with black and brown stripes on it, the shirt coming down to her thighs and the top button left open.

She's wearing his shirt.

Kate stops cold when she sees Rick standing in her kitchen, looking directly at the shirt she's wearing. On instinct, she reacts as swiftly as she can with her body still feeling weak, frail, sick, and just plain terrible, and snatches at the sides of her robe, wrapping her arms around herself to cover up the shirt she's wearing, backing away from him a few steps, her shoulder pressing against the wall of the hallway. "Castle, what are you doing here?"

Ignoring how frail and small her voice sounds in the moment, Rick silently turns around to face her and takes a few slow steps toward her. As he approaches her, she seems to want to fight him by shrinking away when he reaches his hand out cautiously. He stops for a moment, looking her in the eye and seeing her hard furrow he's all too familiar with, and then goes in, taking the edge of her robe in between his finger and thumb, pulling it away.

Giving up hiding it, Kate's arms fall down to her sides on a strained huff, showing him that yes, she's wearing his shirt. She promised herself that she wouldn't, that she wouldn't taint the last memento of him that she had with any of her own scent or being, that it would remain his... but god, she just needed some part of him last night to be around her.

His heart swelling in his chest, Rick looks up to meet her eyes with a vulnerable arch in his brow, seeing she's looking up at him softly. "You left it in your drawer in my dresser."

Rick can't speak as his hand falls away. He just can't fathom that he'd mean that much to anyone that they'd actually keep something of his around like that, much less that he'd mean that much to someone like Kate Beckett.

Kate continues as Rick takes a few steps back toward the kitchen. She can't shrink away and pretend that it makes her weak, letting him know about things like this. "I promised myself that I wouldn't wear it and I haven't, but... I just..." she says, her throat feeling tight with sickness as she feels his eyes on her. When she looks up and sees that his eyes are shining, not cold and iced over like they usually are, she rips open the sides of her walls around her heart, "I just needed some part of you around me last night."

Rick finally manages to break his eyes away, fighting in himself to shore up his armor as best he can, taking in a breath and squaring off his shoulders, turning back around and moving into the kitchen again.

Weakly, she follows him, her feet dragging over the carpet until she hits the linelium in the kitchen and her cotton pajama bottoms slide along the surface. "What are you doing here?" She asks in as non hostile a tone as she can.

Having gathered himself, Rick looks over to her as she shuffles her way to a stool on the other side of the island. "You said you'd be coming by every morning, right?" He starts in a calm tone, sounding unfeeling. "So when you weren't there this morning, I came to check to see if you were alright."

As Kate pulls out a stool that feels oddly heavy, she feels her sickened chest flare as her heart swells. "You were worried about me?"

"Is that not allowed?" He asks her, eyeing her with a lidded gaze. "Your dad told me you were sick and so here I am." He says as he turns around to grab the box of ginger tea out of the cupboard next to the stove.

Kate watches in silence as he moves about the kitchen, setting the tea down next to the stove and filling up a teapot, grabbing a mug from where they keep them next to the coffee maker, and a bottle of barely used honey from the pantry next to the fridge. "Castle, that's very sweet of you," she starts, trying to give him an out if he wants one, "but I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself. It's just the flu."

"Hmm," he hums to himself as he sets the honey down and leans against the island across from her, "this coming from the woman that said she would have said yes to my marriage proposal?" He asks, his voice too casual to be an insult. "I guess we would have skipped the whole 'through sickness and health' thing then, huh?"

She musters up a smile and a roll of her eyes, slouching as she sits on the stool. "I just don't want you getting sick, is all." She tries again.

"I don't get sick, Beckett." He tells her as he grabs the honey and turns back around to the stove. "I'm more of a carrier."

"So what," Kate starts, feeling an odd sense of love, admiration, annoyance, and caring for the man in front of her, "you're going to stay here all day and wait on me hand and foot?" When he doesn't reply, she continues. "And what exactly do you get out of this?"

Rick only replies as the kettle on the stove starts to hiss and he turns around to prepare her tea for her. "Out of the house," he states. Kate fights her smile and reaches up, pinching a stray strand of her unkempt, frizzy, probably horrific looking hair. He slides a steaming cup of tea in front of her after having squirted a small doze on honey in it. "Take small sips." He orders.

She grasps the cup with both hands and brings it to her nose, taking a cautious sip of the liquid, her stomach already churning and her throat already wanting to reject it. After it goes down smoothly, Kate nods to herself and puts the mug down in her lap, watching Rick take the loaf of bread from the top of the fridge and a jar of peanut butter from the pantry, silently watching him as he puts the bread in the toaster.

Kate nods over to the peanut butter, "What's that for?" She asks in her weak, sickly voice.

"It's a trick I picked up when a certain three-year-old redhead was being tucked into Daddy's bed for a nap when she was sick and said she didn't like being sick because quote... throwup tastes icky." He says in a serious tone, making it that much funnier to her.

"So what, it's supposed to settle my stomach?"

"Nope," Rick shakes his head. "Tastes the same coming up as it did going down."

Kate wants to fight him on it, but the toast popping up from the toaster stops her. After he spreads a thin layer of peanut butter on the toast for her, putting it on a small saucer and sliding it over to her, she takes another small sip of her tea. "I'm not sure if I'm supposed to thank you for this or not."

"You will later, trust me. Just eat it slowly." He says as he takes up the bread to put it back.

"So," she begins, taking a small bite of her toast, "I assume that three-year-old redhead you took care of was Alexis?"

"Meredith sure as hell wasn't going to do it." He mutters.

"It just sounds like something that you would have picked up from your mother is all." She shrugs, taking another bite of her toast and raising her tea to her lips.

Rick snorts a laughter as he spins the top back on the jar of peanut butter. "My mother only became mother hen after Alexis was born. If I was ever sick, all she did was tell me to be good for the baby sitter."

She sucks at her teeth as she sets her toast down. "Where is Martha, anyway? I thought she'd be living out here with you guys."

Rick shrugs to himself as he comes back from the pantry. "She came down with me and Alexis when we first came out here, came to stay with us for about a month during the holidays." He explains casually as he leans back against the island across from her. "To her credit, she tried to like it out here like Alexis and I did, but... she just had too much of a social life she was used to living in New York, so... she's staying in the loft and against my better judgment, I gave her carte blanche."

Kate nods and cradles her tea in her hands, her stomach feeling queasy again. On a small, dark, chuckle, she looks down to the cup. "She probably hates me now, right?"

Rick looks up from the counter, seeing her eyes down to her lap.

Kate looks back up with a guilty smile on her tired, makeup scrubbed face. "After what I did."

Rick sighs deeply, his heart feeling heavy. "Honestly?" He preempts. "Me proposing to you was her idea."

Kate's guilty arch in her brow slowly fades. "It was?"

He nods slowly. "She was the one that told me that I had to be the one to take the plunge for us. She said that..." he explains, looking away, "with everyone else I've ever been with, I always dove in headfirst except with you. She told me I had to take a chance if I really wanted it."

Her heart feels so heavy right now, and her churning stomach and lumped up throat isn't helping. "She really must hate me then."

When he doesn't answer, she just takes another small bite of her toast and downs it with another sip of her tea. "And here I was worried that your dad hated me," he says in a joking tone as he turns around back to the stove.

Kate smiles softly as she slouches on the stool. "He's happy out here, Castle. And he doesn't hate you. Actually, you're probably the only boyfriend I've had that he likes."

Rick chuckles to himself from across the kitchen. "Really?" He asks over his shoulder, seeing her give him a nod with a smile, and turns back to the stove to get out the cinnamon buns. "Because I never asked him for your hand or anything." He explains, taking out the baking sheet. "Being a father, I might hold a bit of a grudge of Alexis's boyfriend didn't at least run it by me."

"You're making cinnamon buns?!" She practically scolds him as he sets them down on top of the stove.

"They're not for you." He says with an innocent pout. "Besides, they were expired anyway."

As Kate rolls her eyes and looks away, Rick tosses the potholder down to the counter, until he hears her push out the stool from under her and sees her dart down the hallway.

It's a conscious decision he makes in his mind to go down the hallway after her. Through sickness and health, whether she truly needs him here or not, he'll be here. And as he hears the first sounds of Kate's stomach letting its contents out from the bathroom, he knows his place as he steps inside after her calmly, seeing her on the floor, huddled over the toilet bowl, her face hanging inside.

Without a word, he kneels down next to her, putting himself between her and the shower, and gently takes the unkempt ball of hair that's hanging over her shoulder, and holds it back for her.

* * *

_A/N: Ended up being a lot longer than anticipated. Continued in the next chapter. Whole lot more Rick and Kate. Hope you guys like this chapter. This is a scenario that started me writing this story. _


	22. Chapter 22

_"Blah-cka...cka!" _She vomits loudly, coughing harshly as bile drops from her bottom lip.

Rick's heart feels heavy, knowing there's not much he can do to take away any of this. When he was her partner, all he had to do was jump in front of a bullet or two. Acting as her human shield wouldn't do much good here. Knowing this, he holds her hair back for her, draping the frizzy, unkempt tangles over his forearm.

"Ugghhh..." Kate groans, hanging her head over the edge of the bowl, her hands gripping sides for a moment before falling to the floor limply. Rick stays silent and decides to reach up and pull the useless hair tie from her hair, letting the tangled mess of brunette locks fan out over her back. He puts the hair tie on his finger and thumb, launching it through the air and into the sink on the other side of the bathroom. As he reaches over with his other hand, kneeling on the floor next to her while she sits huddled over the toilet bowl, he brushes her hair back enough to where it's out her way.

He can feel her convulse again, and after a moment, her cheeks puffing up, her face reddening, she opens her mouth and spills her stomach out into the toilet bowl again for another fit of vomiting. "_Blugghh... ka-ka-ka-kuu!" _She coughs.

Rick sighs a small breath out through his nose, holding her hair in a soft grip, trying to stay stoic and steadfast, more for himself than for her, but even now he has to admit to himself that seeing her like this, the woman he admired and loved so much for her strength, determination, and iron will now reduced to this, huddled over a toilet bowl, puking her guts out... it hurts.

After a tense moment, where Kate hangs her face over the bowl with her eyes closed, waiting for the next assault, she moves her tongue around in her mouth and spits in the bowl. She leans up and puts an elbow against one side of the bowl, clutching her pounding forehead with her hand, reaching up with her other hand to pet the arm of Rick's white long sleeved button up. "You don't have to do this, Castle."

Rick lets go of her hair and slowly drags his hand out from the tangled mess, trying to brush some of it out with his fingers out of habit, and moves to sit down on the floor, leaning back against the tub with one arm propped up over his knee. "I also didn't have to shadow you for five years for book research."

That makes Kate pull her eyes open, looking over to him with her hand still clutching her forehead. Rick just gives her a lidded gaze, raised brow, and pout of his lips, waving his hand in the air over his knee. "If that's your way of saying you're doing this to try and get me back, just give the word." She says, managing to muster up a smirk.

Rick doesn't respond beyond hardening his expression.

Kate looks back down into the bowl for a moment, taking her hand off her forehead. "I won't kiss you for obvious reasons, but I'll think of something."

"Hate to burst your bubble, Beckett, but that's not why I'm here either." He says, pushing himself off the back of the tub and over closer to her.

She feels her gag reflex break and she's vomiting into the bowl again, and Rick calmly reaches over and takes her hair for her. After the barrage is done and she hawks another wad of spit into the bowl, Rick waits until she has her face out of the bowl to reach up and pull on the handle to flush. As the water starts to swirl, she doesn't bother looking into the details and decides to just enjoy to brief feeling of the cold mist hitting her face as she rests her head in her hand again.

"This is even worse than when I was shot," She slurs as Rick takes his hand from her hair again.

Rick leans back against the back of the tub again and begins to roll up his sleeves. "Can't exactly say I would know." He says in somewhat of a snide tone. He focuses his eyes on rolling up his sleeves, but can feel Kate's tired, sickly, dark circled eyes on him.

It's silent save for the toilet hissing next to them that stops just as Kate starts. "You really want to do this? You're deciding now's the time to still be upset about that?"

Rick chuckles darkly to himself as he hangs his arm over his knee again. "No, I forgave you for that a long time ago. That and... you know, the whole looking me in the eye every day for a year and lying right to my face thing." Kate closes her eyes and turns her head away from him, covering her face with her hand. He's being honest, holding no grudges over what he had truly forgiven her for. "But then again, I guess some things never change." He says in a dark tone to match his chuckle from earlier.

There's a moment of silence when Kate feels there's nothing she can say and just cradles her aching head in her hand. But after a minute or so, she convulses, feeling her gag reflex swell and hot bile flood her throat. As she hangs her head back over into the toilet bowl, puking out her guts in yet another fit of sickness, the only comfort she has is feeling his gentle hand reaching back up to her hair and gently holding it back for her. After she vomits another couple of times, she groans deeply and gives out on her neck muscles, resting her chin on the edge of the bowl, her head still pounding.

"Uugghhhh..." she groans, her stomach feeling queasy.

Rick gently drags his fingers out of her hair again, his hand acting as a brush to straighten out the tangled, slept on, unkempt mess on her head. He pushes himself up off the floor and sits down on the edge of the tub, reaching into the shower to grab a light blue wash rag, turns on the cold water for a second and rinses it, ringes it out with one hand, then comes back to kneel next to her, shaking out the rag.

"So, tell me, Beckett," he begins in a calm voice, flattening out the rag on his palm and putting a soothing hand on the arch of her back, "why'd you go behind my back with the interview at the AG's office?"

Kate cracks her eyes open, a line of bile still hanging grossly from the edge of her bottom line, and lethargically grabs for the rag, pressing it to her face and exhaling cautiously, the cold, brisk feel of the water feeling like a miracle had just touched her face. She drags it down her face, wiping the leftover sickness from her mouth and a layer of sweat from her skin. "You're really asking about this now?" She asks him, taking the rag from her face.

"No, no, no," Rick says quickly and leans back over, taking the rag from her, folding it three times into a band and pressing it to her forehead with a slow, gentle hand. "Keep it right there." He tells her as he holds the rag against her forehead for her, soon feeling her cold, clamy hand reach up and cover his, her eyes drifting shut as she leans into his palm. "I figured you wouldn't have the energy to lie to me if I bring it up now."

She groans again as she takes his hand back, letting her hold the rag by herself. "Because I couldn't get you to talk about where we were going." She tells him in a thrashy voice. "I didn't know where our relationship was headed," she continues, her eyes still closed and giving him credit where it's due, she just doesn't have the energy to think up a lie, "I thought I'd gotten all I was getting out of us. And the job at the AG's office..." at this point, she thinks, there's probably not much more she can tell him to break his heart further when he starts to get it in his head, "I thought it was my shot at something real."

Rick can feel himself harden and ice over, all of it despite how sickly and pitiful she's looking. Any other time, he'd feel terrible about himself for thinking like this when she's in this state. "And what we had just wasn't real enough?" He asks, his voice low and edging with held-back emotion. "I guess I never realized how badly I screwed things up for you, Kate."

"Oh, Rick, I..." she trails off, taking the rag from her head as she hangs her head back inside the bowl just as she vomits again. "_Blagchka!" _

Even still, Rick reaches over as her head dips into the bowl and takes her hair, holding it back for her, despite how small and shriveled his heart feels.

After she's done with that wave, she wipes the bile from her mouth with the rag and he takes it from her, quickly reaching behind him to rinse it off in the shower faucet, rejuvenating it with cold water. Her eyes look heavy and emotional, more reddened when he folds the rag back up for her and goes to press it to her forehead. Once his hand is holding the rag on her, she covers his hand with her's, taking it and pressing her lips to his palm. His heart jumps at the feeling, his thumb reaching out to brush over her cheekbone out of an old formed habit.

"Rick, I love you." She says in a groggy voice as she lets him take his hand back, pressing the cold rag to her forehead again, leaning against the edge of the bowl. Rick goes back to leaning back against the tub, watching her as she looks over to him with tired eyes.

All he can do is watch her silently as she looks over to him. There was a time when he could have died perfectly happy just having heard those words from her. But it's a lesson learned from turning over a new leaf that even that bile-laden toilet water she's hanging her head over right now will be akin to a Sonoma County, California wine to a man who's dying of thirst. And at this point, not even knowing her, just knowing how it's been his entire life... he just doesn't believe her.

"So," she continues after a pause in both her sickness and the conversation, "how'd your date go?" She asks, her voice heavy. Rick's eyes break out of the cold, icy stare and into a somewhat of a surprised quirk. "We go to the same coffee shop." She points out, telling him how she knew about it.

"Well," Rick sighs, waving his hand in the air as his forearm rests on his knee, "it sure went better than our first date went."

With that, she can feel her heart slowly shatter into pieces, feeling even more painful when she sees that slight unturn on his lips as he looks away from her and smirks. As her eyes burn, she looks away and covers her quickly welling up eyes with the rag.

He sees it happen and pinches his brow. "What?"

When she takes the rag from her eyes, her eyes are red and puffy. "We had _sex _on our first date, Castle!" She says, leaning over and weakly pressing her hand to his shin in a show of just how hurt she is.

But he remains calm, raising his hand to her and cocking one side of his brow. "I'd... actually like to think of it more as making love?" He says with a lift in his voice. "Unless you think of all those times we were together as nothing more than scratching each other's itch?" When all she does is take her bottom lip in between her teeth and shake her head, her big hazel eyes still reddened with emotion, and adding to it her dark, already sickly complexion, none of it is helping. "Nothing happened, okay?" He says in a much softer, calming voice.

She meets his eyes, seeing a familiar look of honesty and caring in his features. She stares into his eyes for a moment, feeling her heartbreak melt away the more she drinks in his soft gaze.

"We went to dinner, we did the usual get-to-know-you stuff, then went for a walk and talked, after which I took her home. The only rubbing I got was from her Siamese cat, and from my research on cats, they only do that to spread pheromones."

Kate nods, slowly turning herself back toward the bowl to prepare for the inevitable bout of vomiting that's sure to come. "I'm gonna hate myself for asking this but why'd you ask her out?" She hesitates, handing him back the rag as a cue for him to run some more water over it.

Rick smiles and takes the rag, quickly rinsing it for her again, hands it back to her and shrugs. "I don't know, she's just... light." He says, not knowing really how to describe Sierra. "Not weighed down, not hiding from anything, pretty easy to talk to."

"So," she says, her heart starting to get heavy again, holding a twinge of heartache at the center, "in other words nothing like me." She tells him, looking away as she takes the cold rag back from him.

"She's definitely quicker with the occasional compliment than you are." He almost snides as he leans back against the tub. When she peers over to him again in a tired, lidded gaze, he smirks proudly. "She even called me cute a couple of times."

She rolls her eyes. "Stop fishing, Castle." She groans, her head still aching. "You're gorgeous, okay?"

His heart flutters for a moment, "Man, you must have one hell of a fever."

"Oh, quit it, Castle," she tells him again, shaking her head.

"Well, I don't exactly ever remember you telling me things like that before."

"One," she starts, "I didn't think you needed your ego boosted by the woman who was already sleeping with you. Two, I did _so _tell you how attractive you were. And three, that's not why I loved you." She finishes, looking him in the eye with a soft, tired smile before waving the rag at him and going back to leaning her head down against the bowl. "It was just an added bonus." She says, peering over to him again. "I really good-looking added bonus."

Despite himself, Rick finds himself fighting a smile, craning his neck to try and hide it from her. After a minute of her not fighting her gag reflex, her stomach seeming to have settled, he looks back up to her. "Think you're done?"

She looks down at the bowl, the contents of her stomach still floating around in the water, and nods. "Yeah."

"Alright, come on," he says to her, standing up and putting his hands on her arms to help her up. Still in her baggy clothes and his shirt, her hair now untangled and falling down her shoulders in the same soft waves as usual aside from still being a bit frazzled and frizzy, Kate's weakened body leans on his strength and support as his arms help her up off the floor.

As her weak, cramped legs test her weight, his arms still holding her up, she slowly gets her balance back and gives him an assuring nod. "I'm up."

"Good," he says, his hands cupping her elbows as she mindlessly wraps her fingers around his biceps.

But she's only mindless of it for a moment before she feels his muscles tense under her touch. When she feels it, her hand increases the pressure on instinct, grasping his muscular arms, so much more defined than the memory of her hands can tell, and she looks up to him, seeing him look down to her eyes in a soft, very familiar gaze. It would be now that she'd just lean in and take his lips, feast on his mouth all she can, jump on him and wrap her legs around his waist, let him carry her to the nearest surface where they could make love. That's usually what that soft look in his eyes and that gentle arch in his brow usually meant before.

Kate shakes her head after a moment, her headache throbbing reminding her of the situation, and lets go of his biceps, running her palms down his forearms and turning out of the bathroom.

"Still worse than when you were shot?" He asks as he trails directly behind her.

Kate smiles, rolls her eyes to herself as she shuffles out of the bathroom, and pushes her hair back. "You didn't use up the last of the peanut butter, did you?"

* * *

_A/N: So, I wasn't going to bring it up until it happened because I really didn't want to spoil anything, but I've been having a bit of a crisis of confidence, so I'll just ask it. Rating change: yay or nay?_

_I won't say when, where, how, who, or why, but I had planned on one. And as with my other stories, I wouldn't do it unless it was pretty crucial to the telling of the story. There are plenty of one-shots out there that fulfill that purpose. If I do up the rating, it won't be just for one scene, and it won't add just M-rated content to the story, it will be part of the story telling. I can maneuver around it with some clever writing tricks, but I don't think it will have the same impact as it would otherwise. Again, I don't want to give away anything, but I also don't want viewership to plunge as usually the case when a rating change happens, since this story is on track to be my most popular (who would've thought?). Please, let me know in the reviews. And a big thank you to all of you who have stuck with this story for this long. 22 chapters is usually when I begin to wrap things up, but this story just as so much plot that needs telling!_

_So again, a big thank you to all of those who have stuck with the story and reviewed! You guys rock. _


	23. Chapter 23

Kate shuffles out of the bathroom, bracing herself on the doorway as she turns down the hallway to head back into the living room. Her throat is sore now after that much severe coughing, her back is tense and aching with an incredible dull pain after that much convulsing and gaging, her head is splitting open at the sides.

But she feels Rick trail right behind her as she slowly drags her feet over the carpet into the living room, going all the blinding speed on a frail old woman. She puts a hand out to brace herself along the wall just before she reaches the threshold of the living room and puts the other hand to her head. "God, I don't remember feeling this terrible when I was in recovery."

Rick sighs to himself, watching her slowly drag her feet across the floor. "Far be it from me to point out the obvious, Beckett," he says in a light tone, "but there is a fully grown healthy adult male standing right behind you."

Kate rolls her eyes, her sore, weakened throat the only thing stopping her from scoffing loudly. "I'm not incontinent, Castle." She says, lifting a hand up in the air behind her as she shuffles slowly into the living room. "It's just the flu, okay?"

"All I'm saying is that you could at least take my hand so you don't fall? Your balance looks-"

"What are you, a boy scout trying to get a merit badge for helping a little old lady cross the street?" She snides, the terrible feeling of her body infecting her attitude, looking over her shoulder to him, her dark complexion making it look like she's furious with him.

"Okay, _nobody _does that anymore."

"Right." She says turning back away from him to continue to shuffle her way to the couch. He feels a part of his control, and one of the last tendons of patience snap when he sees her shake her head to herself, almost certain that there's an eye roll in there behind that wall of frizzy hair. He bites down on his bottom lip, grapples with the air in anger directly behind her, and silently seethes. "I appreciate the help, Castle, but I'm perfectl-_whoa!" _

Kate exclaims as she's lifted off her feet all of the sudden, being taken up in his arms with absolute ease by the man behind her. Her heart fluttering uncomfortably at the surprise of the action, she comes to a stop in his arms, her arm draping over his shoulders out of instinct, but her eyes are firing daggers at him.

"Put me down," she demands.

"I'm sorry," he says as he slowly starts to carry her over to the couch, raising an innocent brow, "but you're being a bit obnoxious."

"And you're being childish!" She snaps back, squirming only once in his grasp.

"_I'm _being childish? I'm trying to help you." He says with a gentle smile. "If you would at least make an effort to be more agreeable, it might make things easier. Now I know being agreeable isn't exactly one of your strong suits, but-"

"Castle, put me down or I'm going to barf on you." She stops him, moving the hand that isn't around his shoulders to point a finger in his face.

But he just smiles and casually shrugs his shoulders. "I've been barfed on before."

"I swear, this will be _so _much worse than Alexis spitting up on you when she was little."

"It wasn't Alexis, it was Gina." He says with a smile, still holding her in his arms. "Turns out she gets motion sickness when dangled three thousand feet above the ground in a hot air balloon."

"Castle, if you don't put me do-_ah- stop it!" _She says, whacking him limply in the chest as he pokes his fingers into the side of her ribcage. "You know I'm ticklish right there." She scolds.

Rick grins devilishly. "Where?" He pokes her lightly again, feeling her squirm.

A small belt of laughter escapes her throat as she twists away from his fingers and into his chest. "I'm serious, put me down."

Rick feels his smile start to get heavy and gives her a nod, but makes no motion to let her go just yet. "I thought you'd miss being in this situation." He says, his smile getting heavier and heavier with every breath as she finally seems to meet his gaze.

And it isn't until she takes a moment to look into his eyes and that finally has a chance to take it in. She's being held in his arms, for the first time in over a year. He hasn't held her like this since the incident with the bomb, and even then, it was only because their life-celebrating sex turned into intense, passionate roughhousing and he ended up ending her carefully planned twists and turns by just sheer brute force, hoisting her up in his arms and throwing them down onto her bed.

But he's never just held her like this.

Her arm that's draped over his shoulders wants to hold him closer now, her hand once demanding he set her down is now flat against his firm chest, trying to find the part in his shirt to catch just a feel of bare skin. "Believe me," she says in an airy voice, her breath getting harder the more she looks into those big blue eyes of his, "there's a lot more I miss about you than just your arms."

With that, his soft smirk fades into the same hard expression she's been struggling to chisel away at for over a month and he looks away, slowly setting her back down to the floor just inches away from the couch. Suddenly feeling a chill run through her, Kate grasps at the sides of her robe and wraps her arms around herself as she moves to sit down in one side of the sofa closest to the kitchen.

"Just um..." he says, taking a few steps back from the couch, "try to be a bit more agreeable? I have to start on the soup." He says, motioning toward the kitchen.

Kate gives him a forced smile, feeling a giant chasm form between them when he turns away from her. She lifts her feet up off the floor and curls them into the seam of the cushions, wrapping her arms around herself as she leans back. It's only a moment to herself, just feeling pitiful and lonely, even as she sees him come back from the kitchen with a warm cup of tea in his hand. He hands it to her with a blank expression that she silently thanks him with a smile.

As her skin gives her another shiver, clutching the hot cup of tea to her chest, pressing her nose to the sleeve of his flannel she's wearing, she sees his broad, muscular, toned figure and defined jaw start away from her. On a tightening chest, knowing that all that pathetic schoolgirl swooning Beth and Barbra have done over him was for a good reason, she calls out to him again. "Rick?"

He stops just at the entrance of the kitchen, a soft lift in his brow.

Kate hesitates before speaking. "In my bedroom, there's a..." she trails off, not wanting the chasm she feels between them to get any larger. She starts to move to get up off the couch.

But he stops her with a simple life of his hand. "No, what is it?"

She settles back, holding the cup to her. "There's a blanket in my room, it's..." she trails off again when she sees him give her a knowing smirk and starts to move down the hall way. "Castle, it's the-"

"The blue one, right?" He asks, turning around with a shrug of his arms.

While she sits in the corner of the couch, watching his incredibly attractive figure stroll down the hallway, a tight clench snakes around her heart. God, he fishes for one compliment and now she can't get her mind off of him. As she sees him in the shadows at the end of the hallway, finally finding the door on the right that leads into her bedroom, she curls into herself.

He knows exactly which blanket is her favorite, which one would bring her the most comfort, is probably going to drape it over her when he comes back just the way he knows she likes it. He probably knows why it's her favorite, probably remembers the story of her nanna sewing a quilt for each one of her grandkids and how Sofie got the brown and plaid red one, and she got the blue and white one. He knows all of those little things about her, more little things than she's let anyone else in on. There's no one on Earth that knows her like he does.

But she wouldn't know what blanket is his favorite.

After a minute, her mind starting to spiral and her heart going with it, Rick comes strolling down the hallway just as casually as he went with her blue quilt folded neatly over his arm. He unfolds it just a few steps away from the couch, splaying it out in front of him and draping it over her. Just as she predicted, he reaches over her and starts to snuggly wrap the quilt around her legs that are curled up on the couch, and she's too paralyzed by her emotions to respond. She just looks into his blue eyes as he adjusts the quilt over her, placing the top end at her hands that still clutch the cup of tea to her chest.

"Get some rest, okay?" He asks, finally looking up to meet her gaze. She has a different, almost emotional wide gaze in her eyes now. He half expected an impatient eye roll when he tucked her in, but she didn't fight up at all. He clears his throat to himself and stands up. "Keeping in this agreeable vein," he says with a slight smirk and a soft, joking tone, "you'll let me know if you need anything?"

All she can do is force a smile, unable to look away from his eyes, searching him for things she should know about. She loves this man more than anyone else in her life, she'd never let anyone get this close to her. She should know about him. Now, all she does is watch as he turns away from her and head into the kitchen, returning a few moments later with a small wastebasket, a grocery bag open inside, and sets it on the floor next to her just in case.

* * *

It's a few hours later now.

Rick had spent most of the time preparing the chicken soup for her after eating a couple of the cinnamon rolls he'd prepared for himself and put the rest in the fridge as leftovers. After a few hours of slowly and carefully chopping vegetables, carefully crushing garlic so's to not wake her up, picking just the right amount of spices and grinding up just the right amount of herbs by hand, and slowly pealing and picking the boiled chicken to just the right size chunks, it's all on the stove on a slow simmer. It will still be a while before it's ready, but it's all there.

The time is just nearing around half past noon when he catches sight of the stirring coming from the couch. He watches from the island while he cuts up one of the last remnants of the carrot from the soup, popping a small piece in his mouth, waiting to see if she'll wake up this time.

He's had to keep himself busy. Cutting up this leftover carrot into pieces is just busy work at this point, an excuse not to go over and see her. He knows himself. He's weak. he goes over there and he'll see her beautiful face, remember how soft her skin is, reach over to brush some hair out of her face with his finger, and before he even realizes it, all the work he's done and effort he's made will mean nothing and he'll be right back on his knees begging for forgiveness just to feel her with him again.

But as he watches out of the corner of his eye, still turned down toward the counter, she continues to stir, and his heart squeezes when the blue quilt he'd tucked around her gets flung up in the air and she sits up off the couch. He can't seem to pull his eyes away from her unkempt hair as she places a hand over her face and seems to groan. She doesn't look over to him as she slowly stands up, dropping her tangled robe from her shoulders, leaving her in just his shirt and faded pink pajama bottoms. As she puts her hands on the back of her waist and starts to lean back to stretch her muscles out, he forces himself to turn away from her.

Seeing her do that was always the quickest way for his arms to find their way around her.

He turns to the fridge and reaches inside, finding the healthiest orange juice they had, finding a glass from the cupboard next to the fridge just as he hears her bare feet hit the linoleum. He turns as he's pouring her a glass of orange juice.

"That smells really good, Castle." She says in a groggy voice, pulling out the stool on the other side of the island.

He slides over a small glass of orange juice to her. "Feeling any better?"

Without a thought, she's grabbing the orange juice and taking a small sip to get some sort of taste in her mouth. "A little," she starts, sucking on her teeth, "my headache feels better."

"Good," he says in a light tone, putting the top back on the orange juice and putting it back.

But when she moves to take another drink, the glass stops short of her lips. "Did... I didn't know we had orange juice."

"You didn't," he says, coming back from the fridge and going back to cutting up the carrot on the counter of the island.

"You went to the store? I didn't hear you leave."

"I had them delivered." He says with a soft look, popping another piece of carrot in his mouth.

"I didn't know they delivered groceries."

"Well, they don't, normally." He shrugs. "But they made an exception for the town celebrity." He says, looking at her with a smug wave in his brow. "It's nice to actually be somebody."

She fights her smile and takes another sip of her juice. When she cradles her glass in her lap, watching him busy himself with clearing the counter of leftover scraps from the soup that smells so appealing right now, all of her feelings come right back and the words are tumbling from her lips before she can stop them. "Why wouldn't you talk to me?"

Rick feels himself freeze with the leaves from the celery stalks in his hand, already bent over the corner of the island toward the trash can. "I'm sorry?"

Her eyes are looking at him with the same wide, emotional gaze, looking so desperate. "About us, about our future, or... or about _you_." She says, waving her hand at him. "How come you never just talked to me?"

The leaves fall into the trashcan and he brushes his hands off in too casual of a motion. "You really want to get into this now?"

She nods to herself, looking down to the glass. "I figure," she starts, feeling sly in her answer, "you'd feel too guilty to lie to your ex right to her face when she has the flu."

He has to stop, taking a moment to drink her in. Her hair is still unruly and unkempt, her eyes are still tired and circled, but still that beautiful hazel he remembers, his shirt is loose and baggy on her slender frame, she's hunched over and looking at him with a soft, almost expectant smile. All he can do is shrug, shake his head in a small, non-dismissive motion, and look down to the counter, trying to busy himself with cleaning up again.

"With how long it took me to finally get my chance, are you really surprised?" He asks in a low tone, not looking over to her from focusing on the counter.

She feels her brow furrow, "What?" She asks, sounding surprised at what he said.

He looks back up to her with a lidded gaze. "It took four years to get my chance with you, Beckett." He says matter-of-factly, pausing to look her in the eye before letting out a hard sigh and looking away again. "I wasn't about to screw it up by doing anything that might scare you away."

Her breath is pained, feeling like her own throat is trying to choke her.

When he looks back up to her with the same lidded gaze, she feels her heart shutter. "Turns out I lose either way, so..." he says, trailing off and going back to clearing the counter of vegetable scraps and dishes.

"Rick..." she says shakingly, not earning his eyes back, "you know you could have talked to me, right?"

"Could I?" He asks right back, not giving himself a chance to take what she said at heart, making him feel any more pitiful than he does when he thinks about this.

"Yes." She says pointedly.

"Like when I told you I loved you?" He almost accuses, letting his hands fall down to his sides.

She drains her lungs of air in a long, hard sigh and stares him down, lifting her brow. "That was different." She fights back.

"At the end of the day, Beckett, it's not." He says, shaking his head and probably unbeknownst to him, letting her see just a little of what's under that emotional armor by the slight glimmer in his eye and the soft and vulnerable arch in his brow. "We got together, you got what you wanted, and just like everyone else, you moved on when something better came."

She bites back her answer, about to ask him what if she was wrong. She swallows it and just continues to hold his gaze, afraid to lose it. He probably didn't mean to say it, but she caught it, and now that she heard it, she doesn't want to forget it. "Is that why you wouldn't talk to me?" She asks in a soft voice, trying to sound as caring as she can. "Because of what happened in your past?"

He blinks hard a few times and looks away, taking up an empty bag of celery, "Doesn't really make a difference anymore." He mutters as he flings the empty bag in the trash.

And it's there that she can see what he's been hiding. He didn't smirk, throw out some clever quip. He's not even attempting to mask his hurt. She just wishes to God that she knew what's hurting him, because she knows now that it's not just her. As he continues to clear the kitchen silently, she can't help but feel her heart tug her closer to him. He's accused her of hiding in her work, and she knows it's true. She knows exactly where she hides, why she hides, and what she hides from, and what made a relationship with him so terrifying before they were together was he did too.

But as she watches him clear the kitchen of trash and utensils, she knows what Meredith was talking about, because it's not just her leaving him for a job that caused this. There's more. While she sits on the stool, watching him silently, she feels her love and care for him swell.

If it's not the hurt from her leaving he's hiding from... what is he hiding from?

* * *

_A/N: Ran a lot longer than I thought it would. Wanted to get the next few scenes in that would lead into the next plot thread, but couldn't manage it with the length. Not sure if you guys would mind or not. Let me know. /:]_


	24. Chapter 24

Castle scoops some of the chicken soup out of the large pot on the stove, being overly generous with the broth. She disappeared a few minutes ago to her bedroom while sitting on the couch with her laptop, watching Temptation Lane reruns on TV.

It's nearing four o'clock and Sasha is probably going crazy that he isn't there. That dog has been all but attached to his side ever since he found her underneath that bench that rainy morning. After texting Alexis a few hours ago, he told her the situation and received a reply that she wasn't going to dig and agreed to feed Sasha, telling him that the dog was going in between her and her boyfriend for affection, and confirmed it with a picture from Alexis, taken of her using Sasha as a pillow while Sasha laid in her boyfriend's lap getting petted.

Right as Rick finishes dishing out her soup, he hears the door to her bedroom open, while Kate comes shuffling into the kitchen at a much healthier speed. Rick turns with a dark red bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. But he's caught slightly off guard when his eyes catch her. It stings for a moment, his defenses just not thinking of it, when he sees her changed out of his shirt into one of her own, a tighter fitting black Henley with the sleeves shoved up her forearms and the three buttons left undone.

He quickly swallows it and looks away from her. "You must be feeling better." He says as he meets her halfway with the bowl in his hand.

Kate doesn't respond right away and just goes about slowly reaching up to her hair and tieing it back in a low hanging ponytail. "No, I still feel like hell." She laments as she pulls the tie off her wrist and onto her hair.

Rick nods, waiting for her to finish as he holds the soup, the bowl starting to get hot. There's a slight twinge of vulnerability and emotional weakness wanting to boil inside of him, but he's swallowing as much of it as he can, shoring up his armor and forcing himself not to think about it. He doesn't owe her anything. It took him four years to get her to give the guy she sees a chance.

When she lets her arms fall down, her stomach still serpentining around itself, her back still stiff and aching, her throat still sore, and her skin feeling clammy, she looks up to him, seeing him stand in front of her with his eyes turned down, his shoulders stiff and rigid, and a complexion of a firm set brow and clenched jaw that's probably hiding gnashing teeth. She tries earning his eyes by gazing at him silently, but he doesn't respond after too long a moment, holding a hot bowl of soup that she can see steam rising up from.

Kate reaches up and puts her hands over his, softly petting the back of his hands with the pads of her fingers before slipping the bowl from his grasp. Without a word, he lets his hands fall as if he doesn't even feel her and turns away from her, going back to the pot to put the lid back on and turn the burner off. Feeling defeated, she turns and starts to head back toward the couch, but stops as her toes find the carpet.

"Rick," she says, using his first name that they usually saved for moments when their hearts were on the line, either having a fight that marked the end of their relationship or as most cases would have it, intense love-making. He turns to look at her over his shoulder, a casual lid in his gaze and curious lift in his brow. "You know just because we broke up doesn't mean you can't talk to me, right?"

All he can muster up is an ill-formed and awkward nod. That weak, vulnerable part of him is trying to get to him, listening to her soft voice and seemingly honest, caring tone. If he listens and doesn't try to just feel nothing like he has been, he knows that he'll end up feeling selfish and petty for not talking.

As Kate turns with a soft smile back to move toward the couch, he breaks. "You took off my shirt."

She stops cold just a few steps away from the kitchen, turning around with a surprised yet caring arch in her brow, clutching the hot bowl of soup in her hands. He's standing right where he was, his hard mask of a cold, stoic expression having fallen. That's what's bothering him? She can feel herself smile as she sighs out a breath of relief, finding it sweet and adorable in a way. "Castle, I took it off because I didn't want it smelling like thrown up peanut butter." She explains with a soft smile, earning his eyes back. "I need _something _to pine over until I get you back and," she shrugs innocently, "I can't exactly pine over something that I've worn out."

He feels a smile want to tug at the edges of his lips but hides it with a nod down to the floor as he turns back toward the stove.

Kate smiles, wanting to think that she at least reassured him the best way she could short of dropping the soup to the floor and wrapping her arms around his neck like she would have last year, and moves back to her nook on the couch, settling down and turning the volume back on the TV where Temptation Lane is just returning from commercial.

She grabs the spoon and lifts the bowl to her chest. The soup smells incredible, soothing as the scent wafts up to her face and down her lungs. She dips the spoon in, taking up as much of the celery, carrots, pasta, and chicken that will fit, and holds it against the side to drain out the broth like she always does. But as she lifts the spoon to take the first bite, she notices Rick still moving about the kitchen.

On another sigh, she lets the spoon down. "Castle, come sit down."

Rick looks over to her from the island, trying to look in the middle of something. "I'm fine, Beckett."

Kate smiles despite herself. "That's why I didn't ask." She says, leaning back and lifting her feet to perch them on the edge of the coffee table. "Come sit down."

She waits until he seems to concede, putting the top back on the pot, wiping his hands on the towel that hangs over the handle on the oven, and moves into the living room, going around the other side of the coffee table and sitting down on the far end of the couch, giving off the air of an unhappy child having been told what to do as he leans against the arm of the couch and leans his head against his fist.

At least having won that small victory, she goes back to taking the first bite. And it tastes incredible. Everything just tastes fresh, just the right amount of spices and herbs to light up her palate, there's even a hint of ginger, maybe even some cinnamon. "Mmm," she moans, "this is amazing, Castle." She compliments over a full mouth.

He lets out a breath, "Alexis hated being sick when she was little so..." he shrugs, thinking back to being alone, even when he was still married to Meredith, "I had learn a few tricks to..." he trails off, looking over to her and noticing her draining the broth from the soup before taking a mouthful of noodles and chicken. "You have to eat the broth, Beckett. That's the whole point of everything else that's in it."

She looks over to him and knits her brow. "I'm saving it for last."

"It's not cereal, Beckett." He quips. "The broth is the best part. Everything else is just to justify it."

On a somewhat frustrated huff, she slouches down in her end of the couch, taking another bite, this time not bothering to drain it of the broth because she knows he's watching her. When everything in the soup seems to go down easier, and oddly enough more satisfyingly, with the broth, she concedes to him that he has a point. As the TV quietly goes on just loud enough for her to hear it, she continues to eat for another few minutes while Rick silently broods at the farthest end of the couch. When she looks over out of the corner of her eye, she feels the same pull form in her heart.

After taking another generous spoonful of his soup, she hesitantly decides to take the first steps of the plunge. "Do you..." she trails off, swallowing her food, "really think you would have scared me away?" She asks in a heavy voice, letting her spoon rest on the edge of the bowl at is rests on her chest.

She can see his eyes harden and his jaw clench. "You still left either way, Beckett."

Kate has to stop herself from letting frustration boil over, taking a breath to calm herself. "I know I left, Rick." She says in a soft tone. "But why do you think talking about us would have scared me away?" She asks, hoping it's enough to garner a reaction from him. But after a moment of him just staring at the TV, she knows it's not. "Because..." she starts, feeling her heart quiver in her already sickened chest, "truthfully, I thought you understood why I waited as long as I did to be with you."

"I do understand why you waited, Beckett." He says too off-handedly to be believed.

"Really?" She fires back. "Because if you did, you'd know that it was because I knew it would be a real relationship." She tells him strongly, looking him in the eye even though he's not returning the favor. "And I thought you knew it was because I wasn't ready to go through losing something that deeply important to me again." She clarifies for him, seeing his eyes finally flick away from the TV, but down to his lap. "But you think that..." she starts piecing it together quietly, letting the bowl slide off her chest and into her lap, "it was you."

She can see another flicker of anger come into his eyes, but when he finally looks back over to her, she knows there's a twinge of pain behind it in his gaze. "If it wasn't me, then why Josh?" With her heart already tangled, she can't respond. "Why Demming?" He asks, more of the pain getting shown in his eyes. "Why _Vaughn?" _

Her hands instinctively move to set the bowl down, wanting to move over to him, caress his face and love on him. But she physically stops herself, forcing herself to sit back in the couch, knowing that it's not enough. She sees him shake his head again and go back to staring into the TV. She feels her heart shrivel and looks down to her soup. "I was wrong."

Rick seizes for a moment. In the near six years he's known her, he'd never heard those words come from her. He hesitates to turn his head and meet her gaze, not wanting the memory if shrugging off her soulful and emotional eyes that he can feel on him.

"If you want the truth," she says, knowing he won't look over to her, "I love you more _now... _than I ever did before. Because I got to experience what my life was like without you." She tells him, feeling like she's pouring her heart out to him again, something she's never been capable of with anyone else. And when she can see him at least think about what she's saying with the inward look in his eyes, she starts to fight back. "But none of that answers my question."

It's that that gives him enough leeway to look over to her.

She meets his gaze strongly. "Why do you think talking to me would have scared me away?" She asks, hoping now it's enough to get a real answer. But he still meets her with silence, but at least looking her in the eye while he does. "Why do you think getting to know more about you will want to make me leave you?"

He breathes a hard sigh, lifting his brow. "You feel like you don't know me?"

"Castle, when I asked you for a blanket," she pulls at her blue quilt underneath her, "you knew exactly which one was my favorite, exactly where to find it, and you probably even know why it's my favorite."

"Your grandmother sewed it for you. She gave it to you for Christmas when you and your parents went to visit her in Vermont one year when you were four." He shrugs, tossing out the incredibly intimate detail about her like it's nothing.

But she just feels her shoulders deflate. "See?" She says, waving her hand at him. "I don't know anything like that about you."

Rick lets his hand fall from resting his head on to his lap. "It's funny you bringing this up, Beckett." He says and she can tell that he's trying to shift the conversation by his voice. "Because before now, I thought you knew me better than anyone else I'd ever been with before."

She nods her head, her heart still pulling toward him. "So, it's not just me then." She says, coming to the conclusion out loud. "Meredith wasn't just trying to poison me against you like you said. She was telling the truth."

"So she did mention that she cheated on me then?" He fires back.

She clenches her teeth, not wanting to fight with him. "Is what she said true, or isn't it? That at the end of your marriage, you knew everything about her and she knew next to nothing about you?"

"Kate," he says, trying to shrug it off by lifting his shoulders, "there isn't much here, alright?"

"We both know that's not true, Rick." She says, pushing back on him again. "I know you don't believe me, so it probably doesn't mean anything to you, but I _love _you. So if you really want to get back at Meredith for trying to turn me against you, prove her wrong and tell me why you think talking to me about our future would have scared me away."

"Because talking about a future is exactly what made Kyra decide to flee the country to get away from me!" He softly exclaims, a heartbreaking twinge of emotion showing in his voice. When he looks to her eyes, she can't look away, looking over to him with just as an emotional arch in her brow as he probably feels. He shakes his head, looks down to his lap, and picks at the fabric of his jeans. "I never planned on ending up with Meredith, Beckett. She was an attractive yet deceptively intelligent woman who threw herself at me after I realized that Kyra wasn't planning on coming back from her trip to 'think things over for a while'." He says, using air quotes.

Her breath feels strained as it leaves her lungs. "So," she begins quietly, almost afraid to prod any further, "Kyra told you she was coming back?"

"Yes, cut to..." he says, waving his hand in the air dismissively as he goes back to lean against it on the arm of the couch, "almost twenty years later and _she's _the one getting married." He shakes his head again, rolling his eyes to himself. "Guess he kissed up to her parents enough."

Saying to him that she's not Kyra she knows won't help. She doesn't want to bring herself into it. "You said that I knew you better than anyone else." She points out, looking down to her soup. "So does that mean Kyra didn't know you either?"

"She knew all she wanted to." He tosses out. "All that ever mattered to her was what her parents thought and to them, I was just a stop in a rebellious college phase, just a..." he breaks in his words, taking in a long breath, "a bastard prodigy of an overly eccentric Broadway actress with no hope of ever amounting to anything worth a damn."

Kate sighs shakingly as she turns her body toward him. "You don't really think that, do you?"

"It was her mother's words, not mine." He dismisses it. "I haven't exactly Googled my net worth lately, but it has to be a little more than a damn."

When he doesn't move to dismiss the first part of the criticism, that even to this day he can recite off-hand, she feels her heart squeeze inside of her chest. She would move to prod further, to delve deeper. She wants to know why he took it so personally, why he thinks it held any validity, why he still carries it with him. The bastard prodigy of an overly eccentric actress...

"You should eat your soup, Beckett. You look hungry."

She looks down to her bowl and turns back to face the TV, taking another spoonful of soup into her mouth.

* * *

After two and a half bowls of his chicken soup and three rerun episodes of Temptation Lane, Kate is fast asleep on the couch again, her body finally giving out to rest as it battles her sickness. The sun is down for the night and Rick is in the kitchen, putting the large pot of leftover soup in the fridge, taking a cold cinnamon roll for himself from under the Saran wrap over the baking dish.

It's been about thirty minutes since Kate fell asleep, and about an hour since she turns on the couch sideways to lay down. After setting the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, he checks the time on the stove and sees it's just nearing eight o'clock. On a sigh, he looks over to the couch, watching as her side rises and falls under her blue quilt as she breathes steadily.

He gulps his nerves down and quietly moves into the living room, moves the small trashcan he set down in case of emergencies out of the way, and kneels down. Rick carefully moves his arms under her back and her legs, taking her up while she's still wrapped up in the quilt. He waits for a moment, her head nestling naturally down on his shoulder. Once he's sure he's not waking her, he starts carefully down the hallway, carrying her into her bedroom, moving around the other side of the bed and setting her down.

He gently tugs at the edges of the quilt to untangle it from her body until it's draped over her warmly and when she stirs, burying her face into her pillow, his eyes catch her features... and he feels his heart fold.

God, she's beautiful.

Before he can even realize it, the tips of his fingers are carefully brushing down the side of her face, pushing back a few stray hairs out of her face. He can feel his memory give his body flashbacks of what it was like to cuddle up behind her, what her slender frame felt like in his arms, how warm and soft her neck was when he'd push her sweet-smelling hair out of the way with his chin and tease her good morning with his lips.

His chest tightening, he stands up and starts out of her bedroom until he catches sight of a drawer of her dresser. Hesitantly, his fingers find the knob and he's tugging it open, seeing his grey flannel neatly folded up. He takes it in his hand for a moment and pulls it out. Once the shirt is in his hand, he sees that underneath it where their old scorecards from Twister.

At the bottom, where the numbers were tallied, she'd written '_You lose!' _along with a drawing of a winking face with a tongue sticking out at him, forcing him to smile. "And yet, somehow, I still won." He mutters to himself.

Once he moves to put the shirt back, he stops, then slowly turns and looks over to her.

* * *

Rick comes walking out of the hallway right as Jim is opening the door, rolling up the sleeves on his grey flannel.

"Hey, Rick," Jim says quietly, noticing the lights turned off.

"Hey, Jim," Rick says back, nervously brushing his palms down his jeans. "How's uh..." he shrugs, "how're things at the store?"

"Ah," Jim shrugs as he tugs off his coat, "long without having Katie there." Rick just forces a smile nervously as Jim goes about hanging up his coat on the rack behind the front door. "So," he starts, turning back around to face him as he stands dead still near the coffee table, "is she feeling any better?"

Rick nods, "She hasn't thrown up since this morning and she seemed to be getting over it pretty quickly, so... I think she'll be fine in the morning."

Jim nods, putting his hands in his pockets. "Well, thanks again, Rick... for" he shrugs, "you know, looking after her. I hope it wasn't too difficult." He says, offering some support. "Considering the circumstances."

"Well," he shrugs nervously again, "I've spent a day or two handling your daughter's foul moods, Jim. I think I can handle the everyday flu."

Jim nods slowly, "You know, Rick," he starts as he paces toward Rick, "I always meant to thank you."

Rick looks up to him, confused for a moment. "What's that for, Jim?" He asks on a soft chuckle.

"Well, Katie and I... honestly, we were never all that close when she was growing up, or... at least not as close as I would have hoped. And after her mother died and she became a cop... we just never really talked all that much. But now that she's off the Force and we've opened the store, it feels like I finally got the chance to... reconnect."

"That's," Rick starts on a smile, "great, Jim, but I'm not exactly too sure what I have to do with that."

"She wouldn't be out here if it wasn't for you, son." He points out, waving toward him.

Rick feels his heart clench in his chest, his armor that has held its own against her feeling useless and pointless against Jim. It's not that he's just the father of a woman he used to be in a relationship with. More that he just has a fatherly tone in his voice and a humble demeanor that Rick doesn't know how to cope with. He never had any of that growing up.

Rick can feel Jim watch him as he looks away, not knowing what he's fishing for. "Rick, I..." he starts, pacing closer toward him, "wasn't going to get in the middle of it, but... I think it'd make me feel better if I knew my daughter wasn't out here just to get hurt."

"So," he hesitates to speak, knowing he's being put on the spot, "what is it you're asking me?"

Jim blinks at him, eyeing him down for a second. "Son, do you still have feelings for her?"

Rick's heart leaps into his throat, his spine tingling uncomfortably. He looks away from him and down to the floor, shrugging his shoulders. "She left me for a job, sir." He says, feeling small as he looks back up to Jim's soft yet stern gaze. "Even if I do give us another chance, it won't change the fact that she'll always be after something else that I can't give her and... honestly, Jim, it was hard enough having to get over her once, so... I'm sorry." He says and starts to move through the living room, stepping around Jim and toward the door.

"I never said I agreed with what she did, Rick." He stops him.

Rick stops, hesitating to turn around, but can feel Jim's eyes on him and turns out of weakness.

"Look, son," Jim starts, craning his neck and pacing back toward him, "when Katie lost her mother and she dedicated herself to her job as being a cop, I was okay with that. Because as long as she was dedicated to her work, she was alright. And don't get me wrong, I couldn't be more proud of what she accomplished." He says, giving Rick a wave of his hand. "But that doesn't mean I wanted my daughter to _live _for her work." He says, meeting Rick's eyes again before looking away and shaking his head. "It was what I was afraid of when she started talking more about you."

"Wha..." Rick starts, feeling weak and almost crippled. "What's that?"

Jim shakes his head, "Katie just didn't get this obsession from nowhere, Rick, she got it from her mother."

Rick blinks, his mind starting to feel as if it needs to play catch-up. "Kate always said her mother was passionate about her work."

"Look, Rick, I loved my wife, but that doesn't mean I don't wish she'd at least slowed down and taken the blinders off." Jim looks away again and shakes his head, seeming to vent all of his thoughts away. "All that being said, you didn't answer my question, son."

Rick breathes out a strained breath and feels his shoulders slouch. "Jim, she's only trying to get me back because she doesn't have anywhere else to go." He defends himself. "Once she gets another offer somewhere, she'll leave just like before."

"She already _got _another offer, Rick." Jim tells him sternly. But Rick is silenced into waiting for Jim to continue. "She turned it down for you."

Rick shakes his head, having been thrown for a loop. "What-what... what offer? She never mentioned anything."

"That's because she didn't want to use it as leverage to get you to take her back." Jim tells him. "Katie wasn't going to say anything and just wait for you to come around on your own."

"Well," Rick starts, his mind buzzing, "what was it? I mean, she told me she's barred from law enforcement."

Jim's expression softens as he explains. "An old law school friend of her mother's got in touch with her last week. Her and Johanna were best friends going through law school and moved out to San Fransisco and started her own firm, and she's now head of one of the most prestigious and powerful law firms in the country, and she wanted Kate to work under her as a consultant."

"That..." Rick starts, not wanting to admit it to himself, "that sounds like an amazing opportunity."

Jim nods to him slowly. "One she turned down for you, son."

Rick's heart squeezes, all of his work and perseverance he's strived to make over this past year feeling like it's all been for nothing in this moment.

"Now, I know it's not exactly a simple question, Rick, but it's still yes or no, and as a father yourself, I think you'd understand wanting to know that something your daughter is going after isn't hopeless."

Rick feels his throat close, his heart ache painfully in his chest, and his eyes turn to the hallway where he just minutes ago carried her in his arms, then down to the grey flannel he's wearing. "Yes."

Jim's eyes crinkle a bit over a soft, understanding smile as he gives Rick a small nod.

Without another word, Rick moves out the door.


	25. Chapter 25

Kate feels her body stir first, slowly rolling over onto her back before grabbing onto the top of the blanket and twisting over to the other side on a deep sigh, relaxing back into the mattress and pillow. She tests her eyes before falling back asleep, feeling them sting at the sides with crust. As she rolls back onto her back, closing her eyes again, she starts to wipe her eyes free of sleep and finally manages lob her head over on her pillow, nodding over to look at the clock on her nightstand.

When she sees the time, reads just fifteen minutes eight o'clock, her body switches into overdrive. "_Crap!" _

In a blinding flash, she flings the quilt off of her body, violently kicking her legs to untangle herself, and stands up. She stops and braces herself against the curtained window, feeling her head swim with dizziness. For a moment, as she clutches her head, her tight fitting Henley shirt feeling tangled and clingy against her, she takes a moment and feels her memory slowly start to swim back to her.

"Castle?" She asks out loud to the emptiness in her room.

Kate slowly paces around her bed, trying her damndest to recall last night. Did she get up and head to bed on her own? No, she doesn't remember doing that. Even if she did, she would have gotten under her covers. But mostly, her covers are undisturbed. She was sleeping under the quilt that she had over her...

Kate feels the tension slowly drift off of her, her heart swelling to bursting as a smile appears on her tired face. He must have carried her to bed. Dear God, she feels like she just fell in love with him all over again. Kate feels a nagging need in her as she takes a large step over to her dresser and pulls open his drawer. But when she finds his shirt missing, at first, her smile fades.

Her hand slowly finds the white button-up with just a slight fade of blue in the fabric, with sky blue pinstripes running down it that brought out his amazing eyes, and she feels her eyes burn. She turns quickly and leans back against the edge of her dresser, cradling the shirt he wore yesterday in her hands like a precious relic. He even switched out shirts for her. Her heart practically throbbing in her chest, she lifts the shirt up and presses the fabric to her face, inhaling as deeply as she can.

Her senses are filled with just as much of his scent as they would be if she had her face buried in the curve of his neck.

She blinks hotly as she lets the shirt down, petting one of the pinstripes with her thumb. "Deny it all you want, Castle." She speaks out loud to herself as she moves to carefully place the shirt back in his drawer. "I know you still love me."

* * *

Kate drives down Elk street twenty minutes after the usual time she arrives. She would have been able to arrive on time to meet him, but she having to take a detour due to the end of her street being blocked off was a bit of an annoyance. Maybe her arriving late will be an ice breaker, maybe just the one she needs to lead him into something light hearted, some playful banter. Her breath starts to tighten as she remembers what it was like to battle his wits, and how firey, passionate, and just incredible his mouth felt when it would reach its height and they'd dive over the edge together.

Her bottom lip gets clasped in between her teeth as she notices his house by the lake. But she feels her hopeful, and flustered, mood flutter away when she turns to pull to a stop at his curb. With him neatly dressed in a dark-colored button-down and jeans, standing at the base of his porch steps, she sees a local Crestfield police cruiser parked in his driveway. There are two uniformed officers talking with him, one of them with heavy set with short curly hair and the other long and lengthy with a shaved head. Kate whips off her seatbelt and shoves open the door to her Impala, climbing out as quickly as she can.

On a quick afterthought, she leans back inside and grabs the two cups sitting inside of the cup holders, flinging the door closed with her hip and then moving across his lawn, seeing both the officers give her a stare as they move back to their cruiser, the tall gangly one giving his partner a crocked smirk over the top of the car as he rounds over to the passenger side.

Ignoring it, she strides over the grass and sees him look in her direction, his expression and eyes softening as he turns to her. "Hey," he says in a small voice.

"Hey," she says as she meets him on the pathway leading up to his porch, absentmindedly handing him the cup on her left hand, and him absentmindedly taking it. "What's going on?" She asks, honestly concerned as she looks up to him with a worried arch in her brow, nodding behind her toward the police cruiser that she can hear take off back down the road.

"Oh," Rick shakes his head, "someone was found dead early this morning and the local police were asking me to look into it."

She feels surprise wash through her, stunned for a brief second into silence. "Oh."

Rick nods, looking to her eyes for a second, feeling tangled up right down to his soul. "It was uh," he starts, feeling nervous, "someone on your street, actually."

Kate feels even more surprised, having realized what the road was blocked off for. "Really?" When he purses his lips and gives her a single nod, she continues. "Who?"

"I told them to just give me the address and that I'd get the details at the scene."

"Oh," Kate says, not sure she knows how she's supposed to feel about it. Someone in Crestfield is dead. What is she supposed to do about it? "Why did they ask you? Was it murder?"

All he does is shrug, lifting his cup to his mouth before answering. "They don't know yet. I was about to head over there now, see if I could help out."

Kate nods, watching his physique as he takes the first sip, taking a second to admire him. In that second, she can feel everything that she felt earlier flutter right through her again, the hope and love she felt seeing the shirt he'd worn yesterday in his drawer. She wants to kiss him so bad right now. "Well," she starts in a tight voice, looking away to force the thought away, "I'm sure you'll do great."

"I don't know, I usually work with a partner." He says with an all too casual smirk and flare in his brow as he lets his cup down.

"Yeah, well, she has to sit this one out, so..." she trails off, giving him a gentle smile. "But you can give me a call if you need anything."

"It's probably nothing, Beckett." He says with a dismissive shake of his head. "All they told me was it was an elderly woman, lived alone, no family. It was probably natural causes, but... something about it has them spooked."

Kate's brow furrows as her mind pulls out a face from her memory. "Ms. Carlson?"

Rick eyes her curiously for a moment. "You know her?"

She shakes her head, blinking rapidly to shake away the cluttering quickly falling into her mind. "S-she uh... she lives down the street. She was always working in her garden."

Rick stays silent as her eyes widen and her brow furrows, looking away from him. "I should get going, but... um..." he hesitates, earning her eyes and attention back with his nervous tone. He gulps thickly as he takes the plunge. "Do you think we could meet tonight?" Kate's entire body lights up, her skin flaring with nerves. "For dinner?"

Her throat closing and her heart running laps around in her chest, she manages to speak. "What?"

"There's just," he says in a tight voice, his weight shifting from side to side, "some things I need to get off my chest, that's all."

She can't get her lungs to let go of this breath. This is it. She can feel it in his voice. He's taking her back. She can feel her body giddy with excitement, already wanting to preemptively jump him and wrap her entire body around him. "Sure." She finally manages to force out.

With a small, almost bashful smile, Rick gives her a nod. "I'll... pick you up, then?"

"Great." She says, letting loose her full smile, not able to hide how happy she is.

Rick lets his small smirk grow into a full, thankful smile. "I should go, they're waiting for me."

* * *

Pulling to a slow stop a few houses down from where they have the road blocked, seeing a few people crowded around on the sidewalk, Rick takes a slow, nervous sip from his cup, puts his Lexus in park, whips off his seatbelt, and shoves the door open. There's a nervous flutter in his heart. He's never been on his own with this before.

Shaking his head to try and physically shake away all of his thoughts, he steps out onto the street, taking in a long breath of the fresh Oregon air. He closes the door to his car and makes his way toward the roadblock, feeling a feigned confidence in his step. He sees some of the pedestrians look over to him, one of the middle-aged women pointing over to him and leaning over to the other middle-aged woman next to her. Knowing there are eyes on him now, he hardens his resolve and makes it to where the Crestfield police cruisers have the road blocked off, stepping through the opening in between their grills, and moving toward the small, one-story, yellow house with a perfectly kept lawn and a very well-groomed and cared for garden on either side of the front door, lining the entire front of the house.

It takes one quick glance, seeing policemen standing idly inside, a few standing idly near the front and a few more moving around the back of the house, for him to try and assess the situation.

What is he doing here? He has no clue what to do.

Feeling like a fraud, he nervously clutches his cup and shoves one hand in the pocket of his jeans and steps around the grass to head inside on the stone walkway.

"Rick?" A familiar, friendly, female voice says from behind him.

Rick turns with a soft lift in his brow and looks over to his side and sees Sierra, dressed in a dark blue windbreaker zipped up almost all the way and a pair of jeans, carrying a large, black toolbox in one hand and a clipboard in the other. "Sierra." He says in a welcoming but surprised tone.

"Hey," Sierra says with her usual bright, face engulfing smile, her eyes lighting up. "Funny seeing you here."

"Likewise," he says, turning to face her, feeling some of his nervousness and tension alleviate out of him. "Completely slipped my mind that you worked for the local morgue."

"Yeah, that's my job." She replies, happily rolling her eyes and smiling. "You know, getting to know dead people's insides."

Rick smirks softly. "I'm sure there's more to it than that, but if you want to put it in laymen's terms for me."

Sierra laughs breathlessly, her toothy, natural smile growing. "Well, uh..." she continues, nodding toward the house and her eyes starting to fall with her brow starting to arch a bit, "I'm sorry, Rick, but this is a uh... kind of a police only zone and I wouldn't want you getting in trouble, so... do you think you could, I mean, would you mind-"

"Oh, no," Rick interrupts her, pulling his hand out of his pocket. "See, I-"

"Mr. Castle?" A uniform calls from the front door. Rick and Sierra both turn to look over to the uniform, the small, heavy set officer with the short curly hair that met him at his house. "Everyone's waiting for you."

Rick gives the officer a polite wave and a smile before looking back over to Sierra, who's looking at him with wide blue eyes and an amazed slack in her jaw. "Duty calls, I guess."

As Rick turns and makes for the front door with his usual stride, he hears the fabric of Sierra's windbreaker quickly catch up with him. "Wait, they called you here?" Rick just looks over to her with a smile. "_Oh, _that's right!" She exclaims, stopping and doubling over. "You used to work with the NYPD with..." Sierra's excitement comes to a seemingly dead halt, her expression falling as her memory comes back, "oh."

He gives her an understanding nod. "It's alright." She gives him a soft, understanding smile, her natural openness and feeling as if he could just tell her everything. "I should get to it."

He heads up to the door as Sierra is trailing behind him. "So, the police really asked you to help?"

"Mmhmm," Rick hums her an answer as he moves through the door. "Those five years I spent with the NYPD wasn't just to get my partner to fall for me." Most of it was, he thinks.

Rick moves inside, the very familiar and very putrid scent of very old and very dead flesh hit him in the face as he steps inside, hearing Sierra right behind him. He looks behind him to let her walk with him to the body, seeing she's turning to shimmy her way inside with her toolbox, the heavyset officer standing at the door shifting his weight from side to side as she moves passed him.

"Hi, Dr. Baker." He says in a small voice.

Sierra gives him a polite smile as she moves through the door before looking over to Rick. "Don't worry, I'll get you some rub for the smell."

Rick nods and moves into the home's living room off to the left, where there are about seven uniformed officers all standing near the walls. In the middle of the floor is the victim, not what he'd consider elderly, but not in her prime either. A grey-haired, short woman, maybe five two in height at most. White tennis shoes, shorts and...

"Oh... god..." Sierra moans for him as she sees the body.

It's then that Rick looks down to the floor next to him and sees the three small animal carriers sitting against the wall, seeing a cat's eyes look at him through the holes on the side of the one closest to him. In horror, he looks back to the body, where small chunks of flesh are missing from the woman's legs and forearms. "Brings new meaning to the phrase 'cat got your tongue'."

"Here," Sierra says next to him.

He looks over and follows her arm to the small jar in her hand with white cream inside. He takes just a tiny bit on the end of his fingers and puts it under his nose, relieved once it starts to kick in and takes the putrid smell away.

"So, Mr. Castle," one of the officers on the other side of the room speaks up for all of them. Rick looks up and see the officer look around to his fellow uniforms before looking back to him. "What happened?"

Rick looks down to the victim laid out on the floor. "Um, Sierra?" He starts quietly, leaning over to the woman next to him. "Can you start the examination, please?"

He can hear Sierra's hard breath waft out of her as she moves away from him and over to the woman on the floor, kneeling down on the opposite side of her and opening her toolkit. "Ms. Carlson was only seventy-one years old." She says as she pulls her eyes away and peels out a pair of black nitrile gloves from inside her toolkit.

"Sierra, could you uh..." He waves at her, motioning for a pair of gloves.

After pulling the gloves on, Sierra continues. "No clear sign of death that I can tell."

"No blood," Rick points out and looks over the home, "no ligature marks... everything's still in place. No signs of a struggle." He observes.

"So," one of the other officers speaks up from the opposite side of the room, "what do we think? She died on her own?"

"Ms. Carlson was in perfect health." Sierra says from the floor, telling the officer sternly. When Rick looks down to her, he feels a smile pull at the ends of his lips. Sierra blinks at the officer softly and turns back down to look at the body. "She might have choked on something." Sierra says, putting her hands carefully on the victim's neck. "Something feels off about the throat but I can't be sure until I get her back to the morgue."

"Choked on what though?" Rick asks as he looks around the room. "Everything's still in order. There're no dishes out, no food scraps. She's too neat to have just choked on something." He points out, noting how perfectly the body is laid out, in the center of the living room.

"Well, there's no bruising around her neck, so I don't think she was strangled." Sierra points out, grimacing as she examines the victim's neck with her fingers. "I haven't even gotten to the teeth marks yet."

"Sierra, do you think you can give me a time of death?"

Sierra looks up to him. "Time of death? Well..." she says, shaking her head and sitting on her feet as she kneels down, "based on body temp and decomp... If I was being liberal about it, I'd say... two and a half days?"

"And-" another officer starts in a rushed, scared voice from the other side of the room. Rick looks over and Sierra over her shoulder to see another uniformed policeman pointing at the cat carriers. "What about tho-those? Why did they... why did they..." when the officer begins to visibly gag, Rick steels himself.

As the officer begins to rush toward the door, Rick reaches over and grabs the nearest officer he can, pulling on the shoulder strap of his body armor underneath his uniform shirt and yanking him toward the door. "Don't let him vomit until he hits the street. This is a crime scene." He hisses in the man's ear as he pushes him out toward the door.

"So," another officer starts again, "why was Ms. Carlson-"

"Eaten?" Castle asks nonchalantly. When all eyes fly up to him, Rick notices and has to pause, looking over everyone in the room. They're all staring at him expectantly. Not just because he said something inappropriate or off-collar like they did in NYPD, silently telling him to shut up. They're looking at him for answers... for leadership. "U-uhm..." he hesitates. "Cats don't bond with their owners."

"What's that mean?" Another one asks.

"It means they don't really love you like another human or... even a dog would." Rick shrugs casually. "Most of them see their owners as food sources so... that's how they treat you in life _and _death."

"Aw," Sierra says from the floor, gaining Rick's eyes. "But... my Persy-purs loves me." She says with a sullen frown, referencing the Persian that Rick remembers meeting.

"So," another officer starts from the other end of the room, "what do we do, Mr. Castle? Was it... was it murder?

"I'd usually wait for an autopsy to determine cause of death, but-" he stops when he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. "But we don't have one of those yet." He mutters as he pulls out his phone.

He looks down to the screen and sees it's a text message from Beckett, _come outside, _it reads.

Rick shakes his head and quickly turns around to lean out the door, seeing Beckett standing on the opposite side of the street next to the middle-aged woman who noticed him as he pulled up. He motions to his phone and shakes his head, giving her a clear shrug of his shoulders. He watches as she looks back down to her phone and receives another text a second later. _911! _

He gnashes his teeth and leans out the door, throwing his arms out to her.

He can see her shoulders deflate before putting her hands on the sides of her mouth. "_Now!" _She yells at the top of her lungs.

Rick looks over his shoulder before taking off in a light jog across the street, having to jump over where the officer lost his breakfast and slows down to meet her at the police line. "What is it?"

"It was murder." Kate says without hesitation.

Rick shakes his head for a second, still skeptical. "Beckett, she was an elderly woman who lived alone. It could have been a heart attack, a stroke."

"It was _murder, _Castle." She says sternly, giving him her look of knowing exactly what she's talking about, the look of her unwavering will.

"How do you know, Beckett? Did you even know this woman?"

"Her garden." She answers him confidently.

"Her garden?" He parrots, seeing her clench her jaw with impatience and look over his shoulder.

Kate reaches over the crime scene tape and puts her hand on the side of his head, her fingers going into his hair, and turns him around, putting her arm around his shoulder and mashing her head against his, pointing her arm straight out to the flower bed underneath the window in the room opposite of the room where the victim is. Feeling her hand on his face and her skin against his stubble, he ignores it as much as he can and notices the row of large yellow flowers is missing a few right underneath the window.

"So?" Rick shrugs as he pulls away from her.

"Castle, Ms. Carlson tended that garden every morning. She won awards for that garden. There's no way in hell she'd trample on her own flowers. Someone broke into that house."

Getting whipped into a panic, Rick looks frantically between her and the flower bed on the other side of the street, seeing two more officers that had gone around to the other side of the house now coming back and headed straight through the yard.

"_Go, _Castle! They're going to damage evidence!" She says powerfully and pushes on his arm.

She watches as Rick goes running back up the house, through the yard and putting his hand out, stopping the two officers before they can step over the scene. When he looks down, it takes him a second to kneel down to the ground and look at the flowerbed, then up to the window. After a moment, he looks back over to her, sending her a smile.

She watches in loving reverence as he motions for the two officers and orders them inside. "We still make a good team, don't we, Castle?"


	26. Chapter 26

It's a few hours into her daily shift at the store, and Kate is sitting on the swivel stool behind the register with an excited tingle at the base of her spine. With a content, pleasant smile on her face that she usually has to fake for customers, she spins herself around and grabs for her cup that sits next to the register, taking a large sip from her luke-warm coffee, using the heel of her sneakers to break herself against one of the legs of the stool.

As she sets her cup down in between her legs, watching a few customers roam about the store, a middle-aged man in a tackle vest and rubber boots and a woman with short, straight blonde hair off in the corner of the store, her dad comes out of the office of the store nestled in the corner, a stack of papers in one hand and adjusting the collar of his jacket with the other. "Are you sure you'll be alright while I'm gone, Katie?" He asks as he makes his way around the other side of the counter.

"I'll be fine, Dad." She says with a relaxed smile. She just can't take her mind off him, how it will go tonight. She's just fluttering for the moment she gets to be with him again.

"Are you sure?" He asks, setting his large stack of papers down to the counter. "You just got over the flu, sweetie. I hate leaving you alone to open up the store tomorrow."

"I'll be fine, Dad." She reassures him as the older man in the store steps up to the register with a smile. "Hi," she greets him.

"I could always cancel, Katie. It's just a class for a license." He shrugs, rifling through his paperwork.

"Dad, that license is important." She tells him, checking out the man for his spool of fishing line, a bright orange jig lure, and a few small weights. "It will be great for business. I'll be fine."

"If you're sure," Jim sighs, grabbing his keys and slipping them into his pocket. "I'll be back tomorrow night, okay?" He says and leans over the counter, placing an awkwardly placed kiss on her cheek.

"Bye, Dad. Be safe." She smiles as she finishes checking out the customer's items.

"Aw, that's nice." The portly man says with a smile, which Kate returns brightly, feeling in a really good mood. "Been ages since any of my boys even gave me a hug." He says with a shake of his head.

Kate decides not to reply, unable to think of an answer that would be suggestive, and simply decides to smile, giving the man his change. "Here you are."

"Thanks again," the man says, turns around and makes for the door, giving the blonde woman still roaming slowly down the aisle to the left a friendly nod. Kate watches as the woman stops near the end of the aisle and takes up her coffee cup again.

Once her cup is to her lips, her cell phone lights up on the counter. She reaches for it without thinking and answers the call. "Hello?" She asks, having become accustomed to not answering with her overly professional greeting as before.

"Uhm..." A tightly wound, frantic voice comes in over the other end of the line, "Hi."

Her brow pinches as she sucks her teeth after taking a drink from her coffee and setting the cup down. "Castle?"

Back at the crime scene, Rick hides in one of the back rooms of the victim's house, looking precariously through the doorway and out into the family room of the house, looking to see if anyone is watching him. "Hey, uh..." he says, leaning back into the laundry room, "I need your help."

"Castle," She almost sighs as she sits back down onto the stool, waiting for the woman to pick out what she's looking for, "I already intruded enough as it is, I can't barge in any more than I already have."

"_No, _no, that's..." he says worriedly, "that's not what I mean." He says in somewhat of a harsh whisper. "I mean, I need..." he trails off in a frustrated sigh, looking cautiously through the doorway to see a very large set man in a tight-fitting polo shirt, a pair of sunglasses, and tactical boots step into the house. "_Crap_, the chief of the police is here." He says into his phone and hides again. "I need to know what to do."

Kate quirks her eyebrows. "What to do?"

"Yeah, you know," he shrugs and shimmies himself away from the doorway to not be found, "how to go about solving this case, like... like what would you do?"

"Castle," she smiles as the woman steps up to the counter, placing a large spool of yellow and blue rope on the counter, along with some hiking boot laces, some replacement fishing hooks, and a can of worms, "you spent five years as my partner doing research. You mean to tell me you don't remember what to do?"

"_Well, _I-" he cuts himself off on a hard sigh, "I didn't exactly spend as much time researching police protocol as I did researching the main character."

Kate feels her lip slide wantingly in between her teeth. "You did, huh?" She asks, her voice lowering. "What exactly did you find?" She attempts.

In a rushed voice, Rick huddles himself in the corner in the darkness of the laundry room as he hears the chief's booming voice from across the small house. "That her knees buckle if I kiss her hard enough."

Kate lets a chuckle escape out in a loud belt as she checks out the woman's items.

"Now, I need to know what to do? Sierra took the body back to the morgue over an hour ago."

Kate smiles warmly as she looks over to the woman, watching absentmindedly as she swipes a credit card. "Do you have a canvas going yet?"

"A can..." he starts, the idea seeming obvious to him, "a _canvas!" _He quietly exclaims.

Kate nods softly. "Get a few uniforms to go up and down the street, asking people if they noticed anything suspicious."

"Right," he says, feeling himself relax.

"After that, you'll want a CSU team to go over the victim's house. I'd start with the front window in the family room and the garden out front."

"It may take a while for a CSU team to get up here, but I think someone around here can pull it off."

"And once you have CSU going on the scene, the autopsy should be done by then."

"And uh..." he starts in a shaky voice, "what if... those don't turn up anything?"

Kate feels herself harden as she takes the woman's recite from the register and hands it to her with a smile, waiting until the woman exits the store to give him an answer. "A random occurrence doesn't happen in a small town like this, Castle. Someone killed her for a reason."

"But Beckett," he tries again, feeling a knot in his throat, "this woman had no family, everybody said she was liked in the neighborhood."

"Yeah, well," she says in a small voice, her head dipping, "that's why you were so good, Castle." She says softly. "You found the story."

Rick feels his heart tighten. "Well, I should go."

Kate nods to herself, her throat closing with nervousness. "Are we..." she starts, "are we still on for dinner tonight?"

Rick, the pressure having been lumped back on his shoulders again, feels his chest clench. "I might get a bit delayed, but I think I can make it. I'll..." he trails off, hearing the chief's loud footsteps creak the floorboards in the family room, "pick you up at seven-thirty?"

Kate feels her heart flutter wildly in her chest. "Okay," she says with a bright, face hurting smile.

"Great," Rick says and awkwardly hangs up.

* * *

After another few hours of him organizing the canvas of the neighborhood with Crestfield's chief of police, Rick got a call from Sierra, asking him to come by when he got the chance, and he'd just parked his Lexus outside of the morgue, a small brick building at the end of the street of the police station in one of the less traveled corners of town. Walking inside and eventually maneuvering his way down a sterile feeling hallway and into a door to the right at the end, he pulls it open and sees Sierra in a set of dark pink scrubs, her short, wavy blonde hair down as she leans over the victim.

"Doctor," Rick greets her casually.

Sierra looks up from the victim with her usual bright, intense smile. "Hi!" She shines. "I didn't expect you here so fast."

"Time is usually of the essence in a murder case." He rattles off as an excuse.

"Right," Sierra says, squaring off her shoulders, straightening her brow and pouting her lips into a stern glare. "Serious then, super... super serious. Murder serious."

Rick smiles softly and steps up to the slab. "So, what did you find?"

Sierra's smile returns softly as she leans back over the victim, putting her hands on her neck. "Ms. Carlson's neck was snapped."

Rick's brow pinches intensely. "Really?"

"Mmhmm," she says and moves over to the wall off to the right, turning on the screen to display an x-ray, Rick casually following her. Sierra points to the bones of the neck in the x-ray with her finger. "Right here, see?"

"Breaking someone's neck usually requires a tremendous amount of force for it to be lethal though." Rick retorts.

"Usually, yes." Sierra agrees with a shrug. "But here," she says, pointing to the neck in the x-ray again, "her neck was broken with enough force for bone fragments to sever her brain stem."

"So, we're looking for someone strong enough to pull that off. Probably male."

"Well," Sierra says in a disagreeing tone, lifting her finger and moving back over to the body. "Here, look." She says, lifting up the sheet over the victim's right leg, and pointing to the back of the knee. "There's bruising on the back of her right knee, suggesting-"

"That," he starts on a nod, following her line of thinking, "someone kicked her to the ground from behind."

"Ms. Carlson was barely five feet tall." Sierra says as she replaces the sheet.

So, whoever killed was probably around that height if they needed to bring the victim to their knees. "But still," Rick shakes his head, turning to face her. "breaking someone's neck requires a lot of force to be fatal."

"Well, Rick," Sierra says, leaning against the edge of the slab. "Ms. Carlson wasn't exactly a young buck... err," she stops, her brow pinching. "buck is a male deh... a young doe? No, that doesn't sound-she was old... is what I'm saying."

"Hmm..." Rick hums as he looks over the victim again. "Did you find anything else?"

Sierra shrugs, "Apart from the animal markings... she had some dirt in her throat and mouth."

Rick nods slowly. "Maybe the killer get it on himself when he was breaking in and she inhaled it when he was trying to kill her?"

"Maybe." Sierra says with an admiring smile that Rick doesn't notice until he's looking over to her.

He smiles slowly, returning her friendly gesture.

But after a moment, Sierra's smile turns to a sullen, nervous frown. "I'm sorry, this... this must be pretty hard for you, I... I didn't think of that. I'm sorry."

Rick nods to her, looking down to the floor and giving her a casual shrug. "I'm just used to building theory with someone else, that's all."

She gives him her smile that just exudes understanding and Rick feels as if he just won't be judged. "It's nice of you to help us out like this, Rick, knowing you rough it will be for you. It must," she says nicely as he paces around to the other side of the slab, "bring back some painful memories."

"Actually," he says with a light smile, turning around to face her over the slab, "no. None of the memories I have of her are really... painful in that way. At least, not of the ones of us working cases together."

Sierra gives him a soft nod before starting again in a very soft, underwhelming tone. "What drew you to her?" She asks.

Rick feels himself smile as his eyes trail away from her. "Well... she was... extremely beautiful."

She smiles brightly at that, but gives him a nod, "And... what usually ends up being the most difficult question for people to answer," she prefaces before looking back over to him, "what else?"

He chuckles under his breath. "She was..." he says as his mind drifts, "strong. But she had this... inner passion for what she was doing that drew me in. Made me ask myself why someone like her felt such a drive to do what she was doing. She had a way of putting her heart into finding justice for the victims that I couldn't help but admire. And she did it with this unwavering bravery yet... at the same time... she had such grace about her. There were moments that I admired the person that inspired me to write again, almost making me wish I could be more like that... that I could just look in the face of things that everyone else was afraid of and not flinch the way she did."

Sierra's smile brightens softly. "Don't think I've ever heard someone talk about someone like that before." She admits. "What made you fall for her?"

Rick leans against the slab opposite her. "There was a person underneath all the... bravado and the... badge, underneath the cop that she let me peak at when she wasn't paying attention. She was softer, she was happier, she... she could actually keep up with me in a battle of wits, she... I knew she had it in her to be as happy as she deserved. I felt that she could grow into the kind of person that could just... leave her badge at the door when she came home and cuddle up for the night and just..." he shakes his head, his emotions getting the better of him as he pictures it in his head, "let someone understand her."

Sierra seems to give him a moment, recognizing the look of deep thought. "And... she never let that happen." She concludes.

Rick shakes his head, a soft smile appearing on his face as he looks back up to her. "I thought it did."

* * *

It's later that night that when Rick finds himself in a small booth for two near the back of a local diner.

"That must have been lonely." She says back, poking the ice of her diet soda with her straw.

Rick shakes his head as he leans back in the cushion. "I like to say that I tried to make the most of it, but... looking back..." He trails off as his voice hardens.

"Rick," she says with a smile, "getting raised by a single mother is difficult enough for any child. I can't imagine what it was like for you, having your mother performing as many nights as she was."

He shrugs. "It's hard to hold it against her." He says, looking away from her. "It's not like she planned to have me in her life, after all."

"Whether you do it or not, Rick, you do have a right." She reaffirms. "Letting your child raise themselves just because someone didn't choose the right guy is wrong, like it or not, Rick."

Rick shakes his head, "Sierra, I had enough to get by. I had food, shelter."

"Rick," she smiles, "that's two things on the list of ten things the CPS looks for when they look for a suitable home for a child and it's so basic, they don't even bother separating them. You needed love."

"It's not like I _never _saw her." He tries again to defend his mother. But when Sierra just squints her bright blue eyes at him, giving him an almost sly smile, he concedes with a smile. "When she sent me off to boarding school for the first time, it did feel like..." he tries, having to look away from her as the words form in his throat, "I was... being abandoned."

* * *

Kate looks over to the clock behind the register while simultaneously checking her phone for the time.

Almost ten minutes to eight o'clock... and no messages. What was she thinking? Getting her hopes up that high?

Her heart quivers painfully over the lump in her throat as she turns off the lights in the shop and makes for the door with her keys in her hand. As she locks the front door for the night, pushing on it to double check the store is locked up as she does every night, she turns around and makes for her Impala. Her stomach admittedly is still a bit weak, but she could go for some comfort food. One of those breakfast cheeseburgers from the diner sounds incredible right now.

She goes in her phone and finds the number to order something to get picked up on her way home.

* * *

"I just..." he struggles again, even after telling more to her than anyone else and never once being judged for it, "I just don't want to get my heart broken like that again. I mean," he says, leaning forward as Sierra stays sitting across from him as calmly as when she sat down, "so she turned down this job offer. What about the next one?"

"Rick," she smiles, "you've been skirting the real issue for a while." She challenges him, making him lean back and look down to his empty glass. "You already know she's willing to marry you and you're not worried about her leaving again."

He feels a lump form in his throat as his heart tells him to just say it. "I don't..." he struggles, "I don't want to end up being a regret... like with..." Sierra nods and gives him a smile, silently giving him an out of saying it out loud. "I just don't want to marry someone who's going to look back in ten years and tell our children that she could have been something in the world if it wasn't for her useless lump of a husband." He aches saying that, feeling weak and vulnerable admitting it. "I don't want to marry someone whose going to act like her life includes me up until the point when she doesn't want it to."

"Then, Rick," she says, shaking her head, "why did you ask her to marry you?"

He grits his teeth, looking toward the wall next to him. "I just..." he looks back down, "I thought we could work it all out."

"Rick, marriage isn't some kind of magic switch. No one can just slip on a set of rings and make all of their problems go away."

"I knew we would have problems to work out." He says in an emotionally honest voice. "I just thought that proposing to her would give her enough of a reason to stay intead of..." he shakes his head and decides not to say it.

But Sierra smiles and pulls it out of him. "Instead of what?"

He meets her eyes, knowing he's showing a glimmer of emotion. "Not end up being the side of the hill whose grass just wasn't green enough again."

"Rick, in my experience," she says with an understanding tone, "the people that are looking for greener grasses do so because they don't know the color of the grass under their feet already."

Rick meets her gaze until his armor is gone. "Then why should I take her back at all?" He asks her honestly. "Why should I believe her when she tells me that she loves me?"

Sierra keeps his eyes for a second before answering him. "Would you believe anyone if they told you they loved you, Rick?" Sierra's eyes keep him locked in with her, pulling more and more out of him as she looks over to him. "It's not that she's just not the type of person that can love you the way you want." She says in the same soft, understanding tone that she's used all night. "It's that you don't believe that you're the type of person that can be loved the way you want."

Rick bats his stinging eyes and looks away with as much courage as he can muster up. "So, what now? What do I do about her if I really do believe that I just can't be with someone that loves me like that?"

She smiles again, "That's kind of what loving someone is all about, Rick. And... as hypocritical as it sounds for either of us to say... marriage is telling the person you love that you're just not leaving." She says confidently. "No matter what happens. And you can't expect to make that promise hold true if you feel you constantly have to top yourself just to keep someone around. You need to know that... she loves you for you, Rick."

He feels his heart ache, like a small child looking for acceptance. A feeling he hates feeling long accustomed to. "I can't really imagine how I'd do that."

She just smiles, despite him not looking at her. "You make it easier than you think, Rick."

He finally feels himself muster up a smile despite himself and looks over to her. "Thank you."

Her smile brightens in welcomeness and after a moment, she's nodding off to her side. "We should probably go, huh? It's getting kind of late."

He smiles and nods to himself. "Yeah, probably."

Sierra scoots herself out of the booth of the diner and brushes her hands down her scrubs. "I just have to go to the little girl's room and I can drop you off at the station."

"I'll take care of the bill." He says as Sierra darts down off behind him.

But when Rick stands up out of the booth, he looks up through the diner and sees her, standing dead still a few feet away from the register with a plastic bag hanging from her hand, looking right at him with a low furrow in her brow. He can see her eyes shimmer from her.

He... he stood her up... for her? He didn't even call her, didn't even send her a text message. And he was with her?

When she feels a cold tear leak out onto her cheek, she turns and rushes out of the front door as fast as she can.

"Ka..." he tries, but cuts himself off.

She just always has to assume the worst about him, doesn't she? His hands ball up into angry fists as his teeth begin the gnash. After a moment, his impatience hotter and hotter by the second, he feels a soft hand lay itself down on his forearm. He turns to see Sierra smile at him softly. "Ready?"

He smiles, feeling his tension ease. "Yeah."

* * *

_A/N: Adjust your search parameters for the next chapter. I'll try to have it up by at the very latest Wednesday. The next chapter, the rating will officially be upped to M. So if you're not already following the story, go ahead and follow it so you can get notified. /=]_


	27. Chapter 27

Thankfully her dad is gone until tomorrow night, otherwise flinging open the front door, getting extremely angry when the key gets stuck in the lock, yanking it out, then slamming the door might cause some alarm. Her bag of food is dropped to the floor as she rips off her denim jacket, turning it inside out when she snatches at the sleeves. Once it's off her arms, she flings it furiously out in front of her, knocking the lampshade against its side before it lands on the couch.

"_Uugggghhhh!" _She seethes violently.

Her eyes don't burn, but she can feel them get hot and start to well up as she paces into the living room, reaching up and putting her hands in her hair, taking fistfuls as she tries to contain herself.

Who the hell does he think he is! After all the things he said, after spending the _entire _day with her, helping take care of her, even carrying her to bed after she fell asleep and leaving his shirt behind, after everything they'd talked about, she could have bet her life that he was ready to take her back. He stayed here, held her hair back despite clearly not wanting to be here, she _finally _got him to open up about himself, and he stands her up for _her!? _

"_Aghhh!" _She seethes again, wanting to rip her hair out, pacing frantically in front of the TV.

A fast knock hits on the door, breaking her out of her riptide of frustration and heartbreak. Zapped of her emotions in that moment, she roughs her palms under her eyes and sniffs over her emotionally congested sinuses, brushing her hair out with her fingers and moves toward the door.

But when she looks through the peephole and sees him with one hand in his pocket, hanging his head, she feels her fury ignite through her like a chemical fire. On a very harsh sigh, she pushes against the door and strides away from it in an angry huff.

"Beckett!" He calls from outside. She stops near the coffee table, looking back over to the door with a cold stare, the sound of his slow, patient sounding voice getting the better part of her heart that he always seemed to have control over. "Just so you know, I have to be at the police station early in the morning." He continues in a casual tone. Kate balls her fists up in tight, dangerous, balls. "So I thought it would be best if we just talked now?" He says with a lift in his voice.

"Talk?" She parrots loudly and obviously as she strides back to the door and yanks it open. "Talk?!" Rick just stares at her with a calm, lidded gaze, but she can tell he's clenching his jaw with impatience. "_Now _you want to talk after I catch you making _googly eyes _with blondie?!" She scolds him, spinning around and marching back into her living room.

"I guess we're jumping straight to conclusions again." He says, sounding as if he's mocking her while he slowly steps inside and closes the door behind him.

"I have every _right _to jump to conclusions, Castle!" She fights with him, turning around at the opposite end of the living room to send him an angry glare. "You said you were picking me up." She demands, pointing her finger at the ground, demanding answers from him as he shifts his weight and looks away from her. "You _said _we were going to talk. You _told me _you wanted us to talk and you stand me up for _her?!" _

"I lost track of time, Beckett." He tries to excuse himself, lifting his arms up in the air.

Her eyes burn holes in him as she storms over to him, closing the distance between them in just three very long strides. "What..." she says on her way and grabs his right forearm with both of her hands, "the _hell _is this?" She says through clenched teeth, yanking his arm up and showing his wrist to him, showing him his watch.

Rick feels his teeth grit and looks away as her fingers dig into his arm for a moment before feeling her toss his arm back down to his side. "Beckett, I'm stuck working with her on this murder case, that's it."

"So you were talking case work then?" She demands, slowly stepping up to him and narrowing her eyes at him, raising her brow, calling him out. "You were talking about the case and you just lost track of time, is that it?"

He feels his throat close again, his chest tighten, and the same scared, vulnerable feeling in the pit of his stomach, terrified of her judgement that makes him close up. "We were just talking, alright?"

"You're _lying!" _She says, poking him in the chest as hard as she can, seeing an instance of a kind of fear she's only ever seen on his face once before flash across his face for a second. "I _know _the look in your eye when you're talking about a case, Castle. I've sat across from it for _five _years! You were _not _talking casework with her."

"We..." he tries, but fails, feeling just so small for not being able to say it. When his eyes travel away from her, Kate leans over and tries to catch him, raising her brow to demand answers. On a hard, shaky sigh, he meets her gaze. "I was talking to her about us, okay?"

It's then that Kate's heart feels as if it's shriveling into a raisin in her chest, taking her lungs, along with her ability to breathe, with it. On weak legs, she shuffles away from him, looking at him with wide, emotionally laden eyes. "You talked to her..." she says back in a small voice, "about us?" She finishes, her voice barely there.

"She's just easy to talk to, that's all." He says in a tight voice, his stomach churning, but manages to muster up a shrug.

"How the _hell-" _she spits, sending her palms into his chest and shoving him, "could you do that to me?!" She spits.

Already feeling weak, Rick is thrown off balance and falls back against the front door. And in a flash, he feels no stronger than a little boy. He just feeels so small. She'll never listen to him. He can't even get her to calm down enough for two seconds to explain himself and she's already trying to push him out of her life. He'll just never be what she wants, no matter what he does. In that moment, with his heart in his throat, feeling emotionally battered, his hand finds the doorknob and cranks it, pulling the door open.

But Kate reaches up and pushes the door closed again, using her other hand to push against his shoulder and force him to turn and look at her. And when he meets her eyes again, she knows without a doubt the look in his eyes and exactly where she's seen it before. The only time she's seen that scared look in his eye before was the night she brought those emails to him that Tyson wrote.

"You're _not _leaving until you answer me, Rick." She says in a harsh whisper, pressing her finger into his shoulder.

"Kate, we were just talking, that's all." He says in a shaky voice.

"I try to get you to talk about us and all you do throw me off, but all of a sudden you can talk to a woman who wants to sleep with you about us?" She demands, keeping him pinned against the door by standing directly in front of him, giving him nowhere to go.

His jaw clenches and his teeth gnash together, his eyes narrowing painfully.

"What was her expert advice, huh?" She asks, raising her brow. "Dump me so she can get her shot on top of you?" She tosses at him.

"She's not like that, okay?" Rick says, feeling as if he has to defend Sierra. "If you have to know, most of it was about me and why are you so upset that I was talking to someone?" He begins to fight back. "You were talking to someone behind my back for an entire year and I never once held that against you."

"I was talking to a _liscened- clinical- therapist!" _She punches, poking him in the chest with each word. "And I was talking to him because I wanted to be the kind of person that open up to you so we could make it work."

"And I don't need someone to talk to?" He pushes back.

"Why can't you just talk to me, Rick?" She fights back, her tone violent and angry. "I'm _right _here, just _talk _to me, _damn it!" _

"The fact that you don't understand what makes talking to you so _damn _difficult for me right now astounds me, Beckett." He fights back.

"You can push me away as much as you want, but I _know _you still love me!" She says, taking another step toward him, keeping him pinned against the front door.

"Believe me, I'm thinking I have good reason to push you away if you're going to cross the line into physical abuse every time we have a fight." He retorts.

But with that, she's fed up with him, and grabs onto the top of his dark burgundy dress shirt and starts to make her way through the living, dragging him along with her. Rick can only silently comply, having no physical strength left in him as she drags him behind her down the hall and into her bedroom. "If you don't love me," she says as she enters her bedroom and lets him go, going over to her dresser, "then what the _hell _is this?" She demands as she yanks open his drawer and tosses his pale white-blue shirt at his face.

Rick pulls with shirt off his face with numb feeling hands. "Kate, it was just-"

"Don't try to spin it, Castle." She says and storms back up to him. "I _know _you still love me." She says, taking the shirt from his chest and tossing it back into the open drawer. "What this was was you just want to see me hurt just like you did with that _stupid stewardess!" _She says, her emotion finally getting the better of her as her voice cracks.

"For the last time, Beckett, I never touched Sierra!" He says loudly. "And I must have been right all along, you really must not love me at all if you think I'm that cruel."

"_Don't _you _dare _try to tell me that I don't love you, Rick. I love you with _all _my heart!" She says in a cracking voice as she steps up to him again.

"I don't think you do, Kate." He tells her in a weak feeling voice, his heart feeling like it's quivering and weak in his chest. "Because right now, it feels like you're two seconds away from packing up and never talking to me again."

"Then you haven't been paying attention!" She says emotionally, poking him in the chest again. "Because I've been telling you for over a _month _that I'm here to get the man I love back but you just can't seem to get it through your _thick _skull that that might actually be you!"

He can't respond to that behind a scared gnashing of his teeth, feeling his eyes burn.

But Kate is already off and she can't stop it now, keeping on him as she slowly paces her way toward him, inching him back toward the door to her bedroom. "You're too scared that there might actually be someone in this world that actually loves you for _who _you are! You're too scared to admit that there's someone in your life that will give you the kind of love that you deserve and that she's standing right in front of you." She says, backing him into her bedroom door, seeing him shake his head as he backs away, his eyes scared and fearful. "You're just too scared to admit that I might be the _love _of your life!" She says, raising her hands up to shove him back again.

Something then breaks inside of him, and Rick reaches up and catches her wrists before she can land the blow, grabs her arms and pins her against the wall to his right.

Her back hits the drywall and she lets out a grunt, feeling his hands tighten around her arms for a second as he presses her against the wall. "Stop it, okay?" He says in a shaky voice, his grip relaxing on her arms.

Snapped out of her riptide of anger, she has a chance to look up to his eyes. God, he still looks so scared. But... she can still feel his hands... gently holding her.

"Why is it so difficult for you to believe that I just might need something else?" He says to her, his shoulders deflating and his voice weak.

"Because you still love me." She answers him with a softly raised brow, a soft smile appearing on her face.

"What _difference _does it make if we're going to keep doing this to each other?" He asks her. "This can't go on."

"Then why are you still holding me?" She asks back in a soft voice, hearing him gasp slightly as his hands stop on her arms.

Because it's only then that Rick realizes that his hands are still holding her arms, carefully and gently, his palms resting against her warm skin and his thumbs petting gentle lines against her biceps. When he realizes it, his heart folds. She just feels... so...

"It doesn't mean anything." He says as his brow furrows and his jaw clenches.

But Kate just smiles and leans in toward him. "Then let go."

Kate watches him closely, as his eyes stare at his hands on her arms, still gingerly holding her. After a moment, she feels his thumbs brush back against her arms again, making her heart skip. When they stop, his darkened eyes flick up to her and she feels herself lock up.

In a blinding second, he pushes her back against the wall and puts his mouth on her in an ignited kiss, his grip on her arms tightening as his lips sealed against her's fully move, starting to almost feast on her lips in a wave of quick, open kisses, his tongue already darting in once and her's darting right after it when his lips chomp down on her. With another frenzied motion of his lips, he kisses her fully, as passionately as he can, mashing her head back against the wall and pulling on her arms, feeling a fire of frustration, anger, and impatience in his breath and in his lips.

Her hands find his stomach, her fingers fist into the fabric of his shirt, and she pushes him away, the sound of a loud smack of their lips hitting her ears. On a gasp after he stole her breath for himself, she looks over to him, stunned. All she can see is the darkness in his eyes, the deep and low hanging furrow in his brow, the tight knit in his jaw.

While she pants, her brow starts to lower and her eyes start to darken. If that's the game he wants to play...

Her hands fist his shirt again and she yanks him back toward her, catching his lips in another sequence of frenzied kisses, lit with anger and frustration. "Mmm!" She moans into his mouth angrily.

"Mmm!" He moans right back as he presses her back against the wall, stepping forward to pin her with his body. Her heart jumps when she feels his hips press her back, her legs already opening for him as she continues to fight with his lips and his tongue. She feels the weight get taken off her feet as his pelvis presses against her, her hands still fisting against his shirt as she pulls him against her. Still so caught up trying to keep up with his frantic lips as his mouth devours her's in a slew of kisses, she's caught completely off guard when she feels him grab both her legs and yank her up, giving her entire body a hard shove up against the wall.

"Uughh!" Kate grunts into his mouth, her legs wrapping around his hips and her ankles hooking together. As her lips slowly start to move into kiss him again, her hands out in front of her, she feels the skin on the back of her thighs tingle with excitement as his fingers dig roughly into her legs. "That all you got?"

Feeling her breath fan into his mouth, Rick squeezes her legs, leans up, and kisses her again as hard as he can. Once his lips are sealed against her, her head pressed back against the wall, he feels her hands go into his hair at the same time she's moving her lips against him and delving her tongue inside of his mouth. When she tries to make the first move by taking a tight fistful of his hair, he tries to get the better of her by pressing his hips against her as hard as he can, making her breath hitch. He doesn't give her another second before his hands leave her thighs and grab onto the bottom hem of her shirt, whipping it off her and over her head.

"Ah!" She grunts as he rips the shirt from her. If they're really doing this, she's not going to lose. God, he frustrates her so damn much!

Right as he's tossing her shirt to the floor, she's latching onto his jaw and yanking him back up to her lips, kissing him as hard as she can with her fingers digging angrily into his scalp. "Mmm!" He yelps into her mouth, which gives her the signal to envelop his neck with her arms and roughly move her hand up through his hair and dig her nails into his head.

But she's caught off guard when his arms go around her, snaking around her back and easing her body toward his chest. "Mmm..." she moans in a long breath, feeling the warmth of his arms on her skin again, making her heart swell, even as they continue to battle for dominance with their frenzied lips. It's only a second after that she feels her bra slacken around her, making her breath catch and her lips stop mid-kiss.

With her forehead leaning down against his and her arms around his neck, she feels him toss her bra out to the same side as her shirt, but she begins to fight him again, pulling on his neck and taking his bottom lip in between her teeth for a second as her hands find the opening of his shirt.

"You're not stopping me," he says as he feels the back of her fingers graze his chest and his hands start to move around the warm skin on her ribcage.

"Neither are you," she pants into his mouth as she begins to unbutton his shirt, moving with as much clumsy speed as she can, taking his lips back. Once she's half way down, he surprises her by moving his hands and cupping her breasts in tight hands, pressing her back against the wall. "_Huh!" _She gasps against his lips, but still manages to fumble for the last few buttons before she moves her arms back around his neck, pulling at his shoulders once more to deepen their still frantic kissing, and reach down his back to tug his shirt out from his pants.

Once he leans forward and presses his chest against her's, Kate inhales a long, slow, satisfying breath into her lungs, feeling the incredible feeling of the skin on skin contact of their bare chests pressing together. God, it feels amazing, she thinks to herself as their lips start to slow down.

Rick moves his hands down her sides while her legs vice him, still pinned against the wall with his hips. Her hands travel from disheveling his hair to moving over his shoulders and down his back, her fingers and palms tracing the new patterns in his new muscles, her breath getting tighter and her center coiling more and more with every firm outline she feels on his back. Her hands soon travel around his shoulders to his chest and her palms greedily slide down his pecs and his clearly defined abs that she's never felt before.

Oh god, he has abs now.

"Mmm..." she moans from her throat deeply while she kisses him slowly, then leans back and looks down to his chest. On a very shaky sigh, she feels her mind go blank and her heart flutter like a trapped butterfly. Her hands travel weakly down the hard lines of his very toned muscles, almost as if to make sure they're really there. "You _really _look great, Castle." She moans as she opens her mouth to let him capture her lips again.

He moves his lips around against her's in another slow motion before answering her. "Are you saying if I looked like this in New York, you wouldn't have left?"

Her hard breathing comes to a dead halt and she stops in the slow motions of her lips, leaning back to see that he's _actually _serious... and her anger fires right back up. Unvicing his hips from the tight grip of her legs, she puts her palms flat on his chest and shoves him off the wall, enough to lose his balance and stagger back, falling back and landing on the bed behind him. She doesn't waste any time in going after him, toeing off her shoes in her pursuit, leaning down and grabbing his wrists, then moving on top of him in a straddle, trapping his hands up by her sides.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" She says through clenched teeth. "I love you for _you._" His eyes just get darker as they flicker over her expression. "You didn't look like this our first night together and it was still the most amazing night of my life."

Rick surprises her, using his strength to get his wrists back and grab onto her's, then roll over on top of her. "Be honest, I know you always liked the cut guys."

She wraps her legs around him again and rolls him over again, getting her hands back and going to undo the fasten on his belt. "But I _love _you."

He leans up suddenly and slams his lips against her in a hard kiss, going back to the battle for dominance by just trying to see who could kiss the hardest. While she unfastens his belt and rips out of his belt loops, he unbuttons her jeans and wraps his fingers around the top hem in the back, pulling the tight-fitting denim off of her. She jumps when the back of his fingers graze along the curve of her ass, her breath catching in the middle of another fiery kiss.

Once her jeans are balled up around her knees, he rolls her over, her back landing square on the surface of the bed, taking her jeans off her legs and throwing them back against the wall behind him. "Just don't tell me who it is you've been with since we broke up." He says as his hands start to slide greedily up her long, toned, beautiful legs. Hearing her scoff loudly and roll her eyes, feeling her pull him closer to the edge of the bed when she wraps her legs around him again, he grabs onto her hips and pulls her body closer to him, her center hitting his hard erection in a forceful knock, making her yelp. "It was painful enough having to picture you with Vaughn."

"Ugh," she groans, her chest heaving already as she stares at the ceiling. "For the millionth time, Castle, I never kissed him, get over it." She slurs as her head nods back and forth.

"And I was never even interested in Sierra." He points out as he puts his hands on the bends of her legs, spreading them and leaning down.

"You were interested in her," she slurs, "but only because you wanted to see me-_Huh!" _She gasps loudly as his mouth lands suddenly lands against her quivering folds. She can't even breathe as he forces his mouth against her, his tongue already delving inside. "Oh..." she maons loudly, her voice strained as her head leans back, pressing back into the bed and her eyes rolling back into her skull, "_God!" _

Her legs shake violently as they lay draped over his shoulders while he goes on quickly devouring her, his lips pinching and massaging, then his tongue lapping, stroking, flicking, and delving. Her soaked folds wet his stubble, her hips buck up against his mouth desperately, her heart pounds against the front of her ribcage like a jackhammer, and her willpower and clarity are already untwining.

Once his hand right hand slides down the inside of her leg, wantingly pinching the flesh of her thighs as he goes, he surprises her and fires his fingers inside of her.

She becomes completely undone the second he curls his fingers up as he does.

"Oohhh!" She cries through clenched teeth, her head pressing deeply into the mattress. "God, Castle!"

As Kate bucks and mewls frantically against the bed, Rick leans up with his lungs drains of air. "Wow," he states as he watches her legs twitch, "either you're a lot better at faking it than I thought or you really haven't been with anyone."

On a hard sigh, she shoots up from the bed, slams her lips onto his, and forcefully starts to shove his pants off his legs, groaning in frustration against into his mouth when the get out of reach. She releases him with a hard pluck, wraps her legs around him, flips him over into the bed, and straddles him, forcing his cock inside of her all I one quick move that only takes a second for him to be buried inside of her.

"Ugh!" He groans hard as she takes him inside of her, his fists balling up tightly in the sheets. She's already tightening herself around him, her hot center gripping him mercilessly.

Kate digs her nails into his chest lightly as she bucks her hips against him in one forceful motion. "I never faked it, Castle." She scolds him as he lays underneath her, flexing his entire body. "And you think it doesn't hurt me thinking of all the women you've been with since we broke up?"

"Mmm," he groans and looks up to her with hard, narrowed eyes, "I haven't been with anyone either, Kate" He says, his teeth still gnashing together. "Sierra asked me out over a month ago and I turned her down."

"Uhh!" She cries out as her hips start to move against his pelvis on their own, his hard erection feeling so satisfying inside of her again. "Which just proves," she says as her head lobs back, forcing her to lean back and brace herself against his knees as she rides him frantically, "that you were just out to hurt me. You didn't even call me, Castle!" She fights with him, crying out up toward the ceiling.

Rick launches his hips up, diving inside of her folds as deep as he can. Hearing her loud yelp and feeling her body freeze and her folds coil around him, he takes hold of her sides and pulls her down to the bed, her body bouncing limply as her back lands on the mattress. He doesn't waste any time in diving back inside of her, rapidly moving in and out of her, hearing her cry out as he leans up and takes hold of her legs. "I lost track of time!" He hisses as his sweat starts to slicken his skin, pounding into her.

"Ooh, Castle!" She moans loudly, her mind blanking.

"You know I would have come."

"You were..." she tries as she mewls frantically, trying to catch up with him as he pounds against her, "you were talking to her, oh... god!" She gives up.

"Mmm!" He stops, burying himself inside of her as deep as he can go and leaning down, bracing himself over her as her hands find his chest.

And it isn't until she pulls her eyes open for a dizzy haze, panting, and looks up to his eyes that it hits her, and she's finally given a grasp of what they're doing.

They're not making love. He's not taking her back, not opening up to her. All they're doing is fighting, just with sex.

But feeling him again, his body on top of her, tasting his lips again, his scent... she just misses him so much. She knows in this moment that it's wrong, that if she said to stop, that he'd stop. But she just wants him more than anything right now.

"Just take me, Castle." She whimpers.

Rick pants, his sweat stained brow furrowing, "What?" He says in a low, unquestioning tone.

Kate launches herself off the bed and slams her lips against him in an angry kiss, gripping his hair with her fists, and releases him. "Take me _now, _Castle!"

Rick kisses her again, freezing as she turns herself around and bends over in front of him, reaching back to put her hand in the curve of her ass, spreading it open for him with an angry, firey look in her eyes as she stares at him.

His mind is blank and his body is moving on it's own over to meet her, placing his hands first on the perfect curve of her ass, then to grip her hips as he delves inside of her again.

"Yes!" She cries out as he enters her, leaning her hips back to pound back into him, wanting more of him. "More... _more!" _She exclaims as he picks up speed and force with every hard thrust.

She groans as her shoulders fall down to the bed, her hands reaching back behind her and her nails digging into the top of his as he grips her hips, still thrusting into her.

"Don't stop," she moans again. "Don't you dare stop," she continues, her voice breathless and weak.

With that, he reaches down and grabs into her upper arms, pulling her up off the bed upright, then moving his arm around in front of her and bracing it around her shoulders, moving his other hand to her hips to arch her back.

Rick moves her hair out of the way with his chin and puts his lips to her jaw, breathing against her.

"Harder," she moans, reaching behind her and putting her hand in his hair.

Rick pounds into her again, holding her to him with his arm across her, going in and out of her as fast and as forcefully as he can, hearing her cry out with each quick motion. As her cries get higher and higher, as her insides twitch around him harder and harder, with one last hard thrust, he spills into her.

And in that moment, feeling him pour into her, she comes undone, unspooling around him. But he reaches down with his opposite hand and presses his fingers down against her clit, and she screams, her orgasam earthquaking through her entire body, harder than she's ever felt before.

"_Aaahhh_!"

A few seconds later, her head limp and swimming, his legs his arm fall, and Kate falls down to the bed on her stomach, completely unable to been move, or even catch her breath. And it's only another moment when he falls into his back next to her, as dead as she is, the only sound she can hear over the intense ringing in her ears is the sound of their pants echoing off the walls.

Soon after that, she falls asleep, but not before a terrible, sinking, cold feeling snakes into her heart.

What did she just do?

_A/N: it never ceases to surprise me that whenever I start to delve into Castles psyche, I'm always met with reviews from the people that don't have a problem reading entire novel- length stories about Kate pushing him away because of her problems and expect him to just sit there like an emotionless plank of wood. No, im not talking about the ending, i knew the reaction I would get to Castle getting mad, thats hoe ypu were supposed to feel. Yeah, I know how I wrote the ending of the last chapter, and yeah, I did it on purpose. I told you from the beginning that these two characters are both still human. _


	28. Chapter 28

A loud buzzing sound startles her awake, her body jolting up in a scared surprise. She heavily lifts her head out from in between the crease in the pillows, reaches out her hand from under her blue quilt, and reaches over to her nightstand to shut off the alarm going off on her phone. When all her hand feels is the flat wooden surface, then the cold metal of the picture frame, she has to focus her crust-ridden eyes through the darkness of her bedroom and sees that her phone isn't sitting on her night stand.

Great, she never remembers to bring the power chord to her phone to the store when she needs it. Her phone's going to die at work.

Having gained some of her senses back, Kate forces herself upright in her bed, the first thing that she notices being that the annoying buzzing from her phone is coming from across the room. Then the next thing she realizes is that she's completely naked. And... very oddly satisfied.

"Oh..." she groans to herself, lifting her hand up to push her messy, slept on hair out of her face, "...god."

The memory of the night before slowly filters back into her mind, the puzzle pieces slowly working their way into a workable picture. All of the sensations of what sex was like with him again, the anger like she's never felt before... she even shoved him. They've never been that angry and hostile toward each other before. And the sex... they've never done anything close to that before. They had never been so rough and unforgiving with each other.

The only thing that snaps her out of the bitter, twisting feeling of guilt and shame is when she finally realizes something and looks over to the other side of the bed.

He's gone.

Kate swallows thickly as her emotions well up inside her like a geyser. They have they done? Why'd she let it go so far? Why didn't she stop him? She knew what it was going to be from the moment that he kissed her again. Why'd she let them make such a mistake?

She sniffs, mostly to test her composure, and climbs out of bed, a chill hitting her naked body as her feet hit the floor, moving tiredly over to the other side of the room next to the dresser, where her jeans from yesterday lay on the floor, turned inside out haphazardly. After a digging awkwardly through the pockets, prying her phone out, and shutting the alarm off, she sets it down to her dresser with a clumsy clatter then puts her hands to her face, trying to muster up enough emotional strength to at least face the day.

She pushes her long hair back, grabs a t-shirt from her dresser from the store and a clean pair of panties, slipping them both on as she makes for the door, not bothering with pants until she's had a shower. She can't see him today. Her dad isn't coming back until later tonight and she can't leave the store unattended. When she opens her bedroom door, feeling like she'd just give anything to be her normal emotionless husk again like she was in DC, she moves straight across the hall to the bathroom.

But when she hears the faint sound of an electrical beep from the kitchen, she stops. Her dad sets the coffee maker to brew every night. He must have left it on.

After going inside and relieving herself, she drags herself out of the bathroom and turns toward the kitchen, wanting to just rid her mouth of the slime that's coating the inside that brushing her teeth didn't seem to take care of. Still in just a pale green loose-fitting t-shirt from the store and a pair of black lace panties, she shuffles over the carpet and turns into the kitchen, her eyes barely half-open.

The sound of a soft clack of coffee cup spooks her, causing her body to jump before she realizes it. "Huh!" She gasps at the sound, her eyes popping open.

When she looks into the kitchen, her eyes immediately find his. In that moment, she doesn't think of what emotions she sees in his expression, whether he looks tired and ragged or groomed and put-together. All she can think in that moment is that he's actually still here. Her lungs let go of a slow breath as her body relaxes, as frozen in place as he is, both of them just staring at one another.

He's in his jeans, his feet bare. The dark burgundy button-up is practically left hanging open at the sides but has the bottom three buttons done, revealing his well toned abs and chest, with the sleeves haphazardly shoved up his forearms. After a moment of finally getting to admire his body in the light, her skin tingling as the sensation sneaks around her emotions, she looks up to his eyes. His brow is arched with what she can only see as guilt, but his lips are pinched into a thin line and his eyes are hardened, like he's trying to pretend he's not feeling anything.

"Hi," she murmurs.

She watches his Adam's apple as he gulps and looks away, his eyes traveling down as he seems to take a moment to stare at her bare legs. "Hey."

A thick silence falls between them that she has no clue how to cut through, and it gets even thicker when the coffee maker he's standing next to hisses and he looks away, turning to grab a mug out of the cupboard next to the oven. "I..." she tries, her voice feeling week as he moves to pour the coffee, "I thought you were gone."

He pulls the carafe out and turns his head, but doesn't look at her, his body freezing. She stares at him until she can see the carafe start to shake in his hand. "I'll leave if you don't want me here." He says in a low tone. She starts to raise, opening her mouth to rebutt him. "I just didn't think you'd be up this early."

"No, Castle, I..." she ends on a sigh, trying to rid her body of the tension. "My dad went out of town for a training seminar, so I have to open up the store this morning." She explains to him, waiting to gauge his reaction.

"I'll just-"

"I don't-"

They speak over each other, preemptively cutting themselves off. When he stops, Kate takes a breath and dives in before he can stop her. "I didn't mean I don't want you here." She gets out as quick as she can. As Rick holds the carafe full of fresh coffee in one hand and an empty mug in the other, he gives her a stiff nod. "I just didn't expect you here, is all."

He waits before giving her a few more stiff nods as he looks down to the counter in front of him, moving to pour the coffee in the mug. "I know that..." he starts in a low, unsteady voice, looking in her direction as he tips the carafe, "last night was-" he stops when the carafe spills scalding coffee onto his hand, making him drop the mug to the counter on its side and the carafe down as quickly as he can. "_Ahh!" _He seethes in pain with clenched teeth.

Not thinking of anything else, Kate quickly leaps through the kitchen, whipping the hand towel the oven handle, turning on the cold water, and rinsing it as quick as she can. "Here, come here." She says softly, taking the hand carefully in the towel, wiping off the hot coffee from his skin as quick as she can before gently wrapping it in the towel, cradling his hand. As he grasps his forearm, with her still holding the towel over his hand, she looks up to him. "You okay?" She asks with a smile.

His brow knitting angrily, he clenches his jaw. "I'm fine."

She feels a bright smile shine onto her face, seeing his pain slowly melt off his expression. "You know, Castle, you don't need to pull the same stunt Vaughn did. You can just ask, okay?" She asks with a bright smile as she leans cradles his hand. When his expression falls and he gives her an almost comical roll of his eyes, her smile brightens to where her eyes are squinting, and she leans in toward him, placing a hand on his cheek.

She can feel him stiffen under her touch. It isn't until she has to pull her hand off him, her fingers brushing down his unshaven stubble that she's brought back to the situation. And when she is, she's hit with the weight of everything just hanging in the air between them. She watches as his face starts to fall and his expression begins to twitch with emotions.

"Last night was..." she trails off slowly, trying to maybe get the ball rolling. But he's still not responding, just looking down to the towel she's gently holding over his hand. "Wrong..." she says finally, the word feeling hard as it leaves her tongue, "right?"

He gives her another stiff nod, "Yeah," he says in the same low, unsteady voice.

Her heart flutters as she looks down to his wrapped hand. Before she can debate it, she's unwrapping the towel from his hand and gently placing one hand over it.

"I'm sorry," he says once her palm touches his hand. When she hears it, her heart seems to fall. He looks back up to her for a second with as much guilt and shame as she felt when she woke up, his eyes shining with emotion. "Kate, I'm so sorry for taking advantage of you and using you like that. I'm-"

"Rick?" She stops him in a soft, steady voice. She waits until he looks up to her again to continue, her expression lidded and calm. "Don't apologize." She says in a soft demand. His expression doesn't shift from apologetic, so she continues. "I'm a big girl, I knew what I was doing." She can hear him let out a long sigh, seeming to calm himself as her hand rests on top of his. "If you used me last night then I used you right back. I knew I could have stopped what we were doing."

Rick nods, agreeing with her. "So..." he hesitates, "you knew that... last night was-"

"We were fighting, Rick." She answers him softly with a one sided shrug. "We were just doing it with sex, I knew that from the moment you kissed me." Once she says that, the memories from last night begin to flicker through her mind's eye, and she starts to get emotional again. "I just missed you so much." She finally gets out, her voice soiled and her hand wrapping around his tenderly.

He looks away from her, his guilt and shame having drained from his face he grabs the towel himself and takes his hand back. She steps away from him, brushing her hair behind her ear as he turns back to the coffee maker. She turns away to go around the island, not knowing how to continue for either of them. "I'm sorry." He says again in a much firmer tone, more steady. When she turns around to see him looking down at the counter, he's going on. "For standing you up... not calling, I'm sorry."

Kate nods and puts her hands on the back of her waist, not feeling shy in the least about standing in front of him in just a t-shirt that only makes it an inch past her hips and a pair of black lace panties. "I'm sorry too." She says as honestly as she can. He turns over his shoulder, looking her in the eye. "For the way I treated you last night." She admits, knowing how angry and violent she was. "No matter how angry I was, there was no reason to treat you like that."

He gives her a solemn nod, hesitating before he turns back toward the counter. "I really would have called, I just lost track of time." He explains again with guilt returning to his voice.

"I know," she gives him a soft smile, raising her hand. "So," she begins in a tight, nervous tone, shuffling her foot against the linoleum, "I don't have to be at the store for another hour and a half." She preempts, putting her hand back against her the back of her waist. "Why don't we talk now?"

Rick's eyes flick from another part of the kitchen and back over to her a few times. "You really think now's the best time for that?"

She smiles softly, lifting the ball of her foot off the ground and shrugging. "Why not, we already got the angry sex out of the way." He manages to muster up a slight smirk, breathing a sigh that seems to resemble a slight chuckle and turns away from her. "Sit down and I'll get the coffee." She tells him while padding gracefully through the kitchen.

"I can get it." He tries to shake it off.

But she stops him by lifting her hand. "I told you I'd bring you coffee every morning, Castle, sit down." She says with a soft smile. "Besides, you already burnt yourself. I don't want to have to rush you to the hospital over coffee."

He just gives her a nod and accepts it, meagerly moving around the opposite end of the island and over to the table. As Kate pulls out another mug from the cupboard and sets it down next to the one already there and begins to pour two cups of coffee, she hears the legs of one of the dining chairs slide across the floor. After pulling the hazelnut out of the fridge and giving each cup a small shot of the liquid creamer, she snaps the top back on and moves back to the fridge.

"Kate?" His lifting voice stops her. The vulnerability and wondering in his voice hits her like a train. Her heart squeezing, she whips around and sees him leaning forward against the table, his hands clasped together against his mouth, his eyes wide as he stares off into space.

"Yeah?" She says as she fumbles to put the creamer back, almost forgetting to grab their coffee as she moves back to meet him at the table.

It takes until she's slowly sitting down across from him and setting his coffee down in front of him, his eyes blinking hard and looking down to the table. "How do you stay so certain?" He rushes, his voice tight and his words rushed, his arms falling down and folding in front of him.

She brushes her hair behind her ear as she slumps forward in her chair. "Certain of what, Castle?"

_It's that you don't believe you're the type of person that can be loved the way you want, _Sierra's words keep ringing in his mind. He's supposed to be stronger than this. But at this point, he knows that just throwing her off will be something he can't fool himself with anymore. He's in it now. Saying it's just nothing will just make him feel weaker. "What..." he makes an honest attempt, wanting to get the words right before making a fool of himself, "what is it that makes you so certain... that..." his voice shakes, "that I still have feelings for you."

_You're just too scared to admit that there might actually be someone in this world that actually loves you for who you are,_ her own words ring in her head, with all the anger and venom she said with it. She wished more than anything she could understand why he felt this way, what made him even ask that question of her. But right now, the best thing she can do for both of them is to give him as honest an answer as she can. "I just know that you do." She says, honestly not able to explain it. "I mean," she says with an honest shrug, "I believe in you, I believe in us. And I just know that despite what you tell yourself that... well, that you still love me."

After looking over to her with heavy eyes, he gives her a nod, leaning back in the chair and looking down to his lap. "I guess I can't really say I know what that's like, then."

Her heart falls into her stomach, her brow knitting. "Rick, if you didn't believe in us, why were you going to ask me to marry you?" She says as the doubt comes to her mind.

"That's not what I said." He stops her, giving her his eyes again. "I was just..." he hardens again, "asking how you can be so sure about something like that, that's all." He says, putting his hand on the table and grasping his mug, a silence falling between them as he takes the first sip.

But as she watches him drink his coffee and set his mug back down, her thoughts are swirling, trying to piece things together. "You're asking me how you can be certain that I love you?" She says, her throat closing over her heart. When he doesn't respond, she feels her heart fold, her emotions welling up inside of her. "Rick, I want you to look at me."

He shores his emotions up as much as he can, trying to present himself as strong for her as he flicks his eyes up to meet her, seeing she has a soft look toward him. Seeing her soft eyes, her gentle brow and slight smile, it was pointless.

Looking him in the eye for a long moment to make sure he understands, she says it slowly. "I love you."

He can't help but feel his heart swell inside of his chest, a flutter going into his limps and up his spine.

"And not because of your fame because... honestly, I could do without other women fawning all over you all the time. It's not because of your money." She explains, shaking her head, still giving him a soft smile. "My parents were both lawyers." She shrugs. "I mean, you pegged me when we first met that I came from money, Castle, and you were right. So I don't care about any of that."

His breath softens as it leaves his lungs, a part of him unclenching.

"I love you for your heart, Castle." She tells him, looking him in the eye. "I just want to get us back to the point where you can trust me with it again." She says, her confidence waning. "Or..." she lets fall, "maybe get us there period."

He gives her another nod and looks away, his heart feeling strange. A tight, odd-feeling mixture of acceptance, doubt, humility, and insecurity. Because he knows it's not her that has to do the work now. He knows it's on him now.

"So," she says, ending the topic as she grabs for her mug, "you're still working on the case then?"

He nods and moves to take another drink from his own mug, mirroring her. "Yeah, the police spent all day canvasing the town. Everyone's heard, so naturally, they all want to know what happened. And unlike Manhattan, people around here are surprisingly helpful, so the police are hopeful that something will turn up."

She smiles, heavily this time. "Well," she says and stands up from her chair, snagging at the bottom hem of her shirt, "you know I'd love to help you out, but..." she smiles as he slowly stands up in front of her, "I don't want to risk ruining what chance I got at freedom from the AG's office by butting in, so..." she trails off.

He gives her an understanding look, "I don't suppose you're ever going to tell me what really happened?"

She feels her entire body lock up, the whole ordeal flashing before her. "If I could tell you without getting put in a windowless hole like I should have been, I would."

His eyes fall, but only for a moment before he looks back up to her again. "I understand." He says before looking passed her and moving around her.

But Kate is catching him as he passes her, wrapping her arms around his chest and burying her face in his neck. She feels him stiffen with surprise at first, only making her squeeze him harder. She doesn't think about it that often, about just how lucky she got from the AG's office, about the shot at a life that she probably doesn't deserve after what she did. Looking back, after New York, she'd thought that after losing everything, that her life was over. She didn't even have a single clue as to what she was going to do with her life.

As she hugs him, feeling his arms fall down around her and feeling his breath fan down across her hair, she knows that she didn't lose even close to everything. Because he's here.

"I'm sorry about what happened last night, Castle." She says again into his neck.

She feels him nod against her. "Me too, Kate."

"But Rick," she says seriously, leaning back and moving her arms out from around him, putting her hands in the opening of his shirt, gaining his eyes. "That can't happen again, okay?" His eyes fall again, guilty and shameful. "The next time you kiss me like that, it needs to be for the right reason."

When the look of guilt and shame is slow to leave his expression, Kate flattens her hands against his chest tenderly, slowly moving down the toned expanse of his pecs and his abs.

"And nothing I said about me loving you has changed."

Rick moves his hands up and softly takes her's, brushing his thumbs across her knuckles, holding her hands for a long moment before letting them fall. "I know."

* * *

_A/N: Almost to quadruple-digit review numbers! Big ups to those who have followed and supported this story. Lemme know what you think. Surprised by this chapter? What you thought it was going to be? T-boned by it, maybe? Saw it coming? _


	29. Chapter 29

_A/N: Have to put this at the beginning, otherwise I run the risk of angry reviews. This chapter is very 'Rick heavy'. For some, it may feel like a filler chapter, but it kinda needs to happen for the plot, but the next chapter I think will make up for it. Thanks again to all you awesome-sauce people that have followed this story. You guys are pretty much what keeps me writing._

* * *

Sasha lays flat on his chest on her side, her head tucked up underneath his. He has his arm wrapped around her, his hand buried in the thick fur on her side. She's snoring softly, in heaven as she sleeps directly on top of her master, who she's missed the past two days with him being gone. Rick lays across the couch, just resting his body, half asleep, his mind quiet.

It's soothing, just laying here with what he can honestly consider his best friend, his dog. He always had an impulse to pet an animal if one was around when he was growing up. Part of the reason why Sasha is so attached to him, if she comes up to him, it will just be a few seconds before he starts petting her and giving her attention. He always wanted a dog like Sasha growing up. He was even going to adopt one when Alexis was a toddler, but he couldn't bring himself to basically sequester a dog like Sasha to a life in the loft, as spacious as it is, never going outside in the fresh air or the grass.

It's one of the small reasons why he stayed out here. Him and his dog, Sasha, just spending hours in town at the park playing fetch.

Sasha snorts loudly on top of him as she lays flat on her side, getting a hitch in her breath as she sleeps. After a minute of Rick recharging, he can feel the presence of his daughter in the living room. Feeling a smile pull at the corners of his mouth, he stays quiet. He hears her snap a picture from her phone then hears her swallow a soft chuckle.

"Can you text that one to me?" He asks her in a slurred voice.

"Hmm," Alexis chuckles softly again, "sure, Dad."

At the sound of Alexis's voice, Sasha wakes up and pops her head off her human's chest, looking over to her as she approaches her father. Rick puts his arms around Sasha when she wakes up, kissing the dog playfully on her head, earning a few playful sniffs from her before she lays her head back down to his chest.

"So," Alexis starts, coming around to sit on the coffee table across from her dad, "I thought you said you'd be back last night, what happened?" Rick looks over to her to gauge his daughter's expression. It's not a judgement like it would be with his mother, she's just curious. "Did you work late at the police station? You look tired."

He nods, feeling his heart sink at the same time Sasha adjusts herself on top of him and lays her head down across his shoulder instead of on his chest. He doesn't want to lie to her. Alexis is the only consistently good thing in his life. "Actually, I was with Beckett last night." He says, his voice low and overly steady.

He can see Alexis start to waver in her soft confidence of the situation. "Really?"

Rick's eyes fall away and he puts reaches up, petting Sasha gently. "I went over to just talk." He starts to explain, looking over to his daughter's worried expression for a moment. "And we ended up getting into a fight." He finishes in a weighted voice. Alexis gives him a signal that she understands and that she wishes something better had happened by craning her neck and clasping her hands together in her lap. "Long story short, I didn't get much sleep night so I'm kinda tired."

She gives him a nod, feigned with casual understanding as she brushes her red hair that's running down an inch or so passed her shoulders. "So you and Beckett are..." she spitballs, not wanting to just outright say it.

Rick moves his hand up through Sasha's fur, hugging his loyal dog to him as he stares at the stucco on the ceiling. "Nothing's changed, Alexis." He says heavily. "Things just got heated and neither one of us stopped it."

He hates having to explain this kind of this to his daughter. He always dreaded early in her childhood, especially after Meredith left him, that he'd have to pull her out of this type of life and type of situation, that he'd be the one sitting her down and explaining just how wrong it is after he realized he would have to let his daughter grow up without her own mother there.

"But," he continues on a soft sigh, "we talked it over around three o'clock this morning, apologized, and I came home, took a shower, and..." he says, nodding his head over to nuzzle against Sasha lovingly, "decided to spend some time with this poor, neglected puppy."

While he scratches Sasha's ribcage under her thick black and tan coat, Alexis smiles. "I can tell she missed you the last couple of days." She says, reaching over from the coffee table and scratching her on her hind leg. "But she got attached to Ethan when he was here a couple nights ago."

"Hmm," Rick hums in a chuckle, still softly scratching his dog that lays flat on top of him. "So, you and him are getting pretty serious then, huh?" He asks her, never missing an opportunity to show he's invested in his daughter's life and her wellbeing.

Alexis's face is overcome with both a blush and a bright smile. "Yeah," she answers in a light voice. "He's great, I've..." she trails off, tossing her hands up in the air before clasping them together in her lap again, "I've never felt like this about anyone before."

Rick nods with a soft smile. "So, you're getting pretty close?" He asks, not wanting to just blurt it out.

But Alexis understands his wording and rolls her eyes. "We talked about it already, Dad. He said that he'd actually prefer to wait." Rick's brow shoots up in surprise. "I mean," she shakes her head with a smile, her eyes looking away, "he's really cute, but... he says he wants to make sure that I'm around for more than that and... he says he wants to make sure that I know he is too, so... we're both happy waiting until the..." she sais, her voice getting lighter, her eyes lighting up, "the right time."

Rick smiles softly, pride for his daughter swelling inside of him. "You know, you're a much better person than I am, pumpkin."

"You should try and give yourself a break every once in a while, Dad." She answers his compliment. "I mean, you and Beckett have always been anything but simple."

While Rick stares at the ceiling, feeling Sasha sleep soundly on top of him, his brain starts to nag him, his heart soon following it by sinking back into his stomach. "Alexis, what do you think of when you think about your childhood?" He asks, honestly wanting to know, not as a way to seek a compliment, but just wanting to know what she thinks. He turns his head against the arm of the couch to look over to her, seeing she's looking at him with a crease in her brow. "What was it like for you when you think back?"

She smiles and shrugs her shoulders. "I had a great childhood, Dad." When he keeps her eyes, she understands that he's silently wanting her to expand on it. "I mostly think of you when I think back to my childhood. You were always going with me to field trips, you were at every recital and concert, you were just... always there."

Rick feels a smile on his face as he turns back to look at the ceiling. "Well, I just wanted you to make sure you knew that I loved you, pumpkin." He says, letting his head turn back and look over to her.

"I know you do, Dad." She answers obviously. "Why, was..." she trails off, her brow falling, "was there something bothering you? You're a great dad."

Rick nods to himself and lets his eyes travel away from her. "Only terrible parents say that they weren't terrible parents, Alexis." He says, heaviness returning to his voice.

"Well, what is it you wish you could have changed then, Dad?" She asks, her tone suggesting there's nothing he could have possibly done better. It wasn't his intention to make her see him as the biggest person in the world that loved her more than anything when he stayed so committed to his daughter growing up. He just did it because he did love her more than anything else.

"I wish I could have given you your mother." He says in a very somber tone. "I wish I could have gotten her to see in you what I saw when you were born... that I could have been able to convince her how great our lives were then with you in it." He explains as honestly as he can.

"Dad," Alexis smiles, "I get how Mom is." She explains to him, trying to take the burden off. "You were there." She lifts her hand to him. "And I had Gram."

Rick chuckles despite himself. "Alexis, if she was as involved in my childhood as she was in yours, we might not have to have this discussion."

"Oh, Dad, come on." Alexis tries with disbelief in her voice. "When we lived in New York, you were always complaining about how she was butting into your personal life."

"Alexis, I didn't grow up with that same woman, okay?" He explains to her, lifting his hand up off Sasha's side for a moment. "When I was born, your grandmother was..." his voice falls, trying to explain it as easily as he can without destroying the love his daughter has for her grandmother, "let's just say she was a lot more successful of an actress than she was when you were born."

His daughter's expression falls for a second, and he can tell that she already understands the main point of what he's trying to say.

"I know she did the best she could, but... as a kid, you don't really understand why your mother has to leave you with a baby sitter almost every night and then has to go away on the road for weeks at a time. So... that's why I asked you what you thought of when you think back to your childhood, pumpkin." He cushions his exposition. "Because I just wanted to make sure it was something better than what I think of."

"Dad," Alexis says on a nervous chuckle, "Gram is great." She says in a wavering voice, simply not wanting to fight with him on it. "And I don't exactly think that your dad was in any place to pick up the slack, was he?"

Rick nods, "Well, no." He answers her, raising his brow in agreement. "And considering that the only two people who know about him are sitting in this room, that's probably for the best when you think about just what the circumstances of that little family reunion." He says, knowing how terrible that trip was for both of them. "And Alexis," he says, his voice falling, "you know that I tried to get your grandmother to stay out here with us."

Alexis nods, "I know, Dad, she just didn't want to give up the city life."

"Well, maybe she'll change her mind when she comes down for your's and your boyfriend's wedding then." He fires out, quickly turning his head to nuzzle against Sasha again. As Alexis chuckles and rolls her eyes, Rick's phone goes off loudly in his back pocket.

"_Rwoof!" _Sasha barks just as loud directly into his ear.

"Shh!" Rick quiets her down with a smile, laughter getting the better of him as he puts a hand softly on her head to calm her down and reaches into his back pocket. He almost completely forgot about his commitment at the police station. He answers the call and puts the phone to his ear. "Castle."

"Castle!" The chief greets him on the line in his exuberant yet commanding voice.

"Hey, Chief." He says in a friendly tone, not moving to get up off the couch. "I was uh... just on my way out the door." He says, giving Alexis an obvious looking grimace, Sasha still laying flat on top of him. Alexis fights her smile and rolls her eyes.

"Ah, that's why I called you, Castle." The chief says happily. "No need for it, actually. Someone confessed to the crime this morning."

Rick's brow raises up in surprise. "Really? Someone confessed?"

"Yep," the chief continues, "saves us a lot of trouble."

"Do you mind if I ask who it was?" Rick asks.

"Ah," the chief exclaims, "it was a local hoodlum, some teenager, probably looking for thrills or something. I got a call from the principal of Crestfield High just a little while ago that said a student came to her office this morning and confessed. Had my officers go down and they're bringing him in now."

"Did they take his statement?"

"Mmhmm," the chief hums confidently, "they said his story checks out. He's bring brought in now, the DA is being notified, and we're trying to get in touch with his parents now."

"Well, uh..." Rick tries, urging Sasha off him as he slowly sits him off the couch, "do you mind if I come down and ask him a few questions?"

The chief laughs into the phone slightly. "I appreciate the assist, Castle, but that's not really necessary. We can take it from here."

"Why don't we call it an insurance policy, Chief." He says, using his charming tone. "You brought me on as an expert consultant after all. Maybe this kid had someone help him out or maybe he's just the fall guy that was pressured into taking the wrap."

The chief sighs hard. "Alright, Castle. I suppose it couldn't hurt. Come on down, we'll have him ready for you."

"Thanks, Chief." Rick says and hangs up, standing up quickly off the couch.

"Someone confessed?" Alexis asks him as he tries fruitlessly to brush Sasha's long strands of dog hair off the front of his shirt.

"Yes," he says and quickly moves around the coffee table to rush upstairs to change out his shirt, "which doesn't make sense."

* * *

After rushing to the police station in a new pair of jeans and a clean grey button-up and a charcoal sport coat, Rick pushes open the glass door of the police station, seeing the usual slow slew of activity around the large expanse of the desks around and the offices that line the walls, the empty interrogation room that makes the one from the 12th look like a full concert hall, in the back corner on the opposite end of the room.

Rick quickly moves through the desks, receiving a few smirks and smiles on his way toward the Chief's office, whose door is left cracked open. He sees the very large set, shaved-headed man stand up from his desk just as Sierra pulls open the door of his office with her usual, natural, happy smile, dressed in a set of park pink scrubs and running shoes, her short, shoulder-length hair died back in a short ponytail.

"Sierra," Rick says surprised as he approaches the office.

The doctor looks up with a bright smile when she sees him. "Rick!" She exclaims happily. "I wasn't expecting to see you here this early. You look kinda tired."

Rick checks himself and stiffens his expression. "I had kind of a late night after you dropped me off, that's all. What uh..." he waves at her, "what are you doing here?"

Sierra motions behind her with her shoulder, jabbing her thumb back toward the Chief's office, "I had to drop off my final report on the body. I can never figure out that stupid fax machine and the transcriptionist is out sick. So I figured I'd just drop it off myself. What about you? Chief just told me someone confessed."

The chief called me about fifteen minutes ago and told me. I wanted to come down and check the-" Rick's words get cut off when he sees Sierra look around him. He turns over his shoulder to follow her eyes and sees the two police that stopped by his house, the shorter, more portly and curly-haired one named Andy and the taller, more gangly one named Andrew. With them, they're escorting a tall, lengthy, very skinny teenager. His hair is short and spikey, died jet black. He's wearing well-worn, baggy Slipknot t-shirt over a tight-fitting black long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of baggy step chain jeans, buckles and chains hanging off the legs. His eyes are made up to be almost totally black, and he has an almost two-inch thick cloth collar around his neck.

The only sound in the station is the sound of the chains from the teenager's pants as he's lead through the station and into the interrogation room.

Rick hears the door to his side open and Chief's loud footsteps come out to stand next to Sierra. Rick turns back and looks over to the chief. "Is that the kid that confessed to the murder?"

"Yep," he begins, flipping open a folder in his hand. "John McAnders, seventeen, a junior at Crestfield high."

Rick looks at the front of the folder and notices it's not from the police station. "That's his permanent record from the school?" He asks him.

"Yep," the chief says and flips over a page, "kinda long too. The school faxed it over."

"They faxed this over?" Sierra asks. "They can figure out how to fax an entire file, I can't even figure out how to fax one lousy piece of paper, those stupid..."

"Chief, do you mind if I take a look?" He asks, pointing at the folder. The chief silently fips the folder closed and hands it to Rick, who quickly opens it and begins reading it.

"Here you go, Chief." Andrew says, handing Chief the statement they took.

"Hi, Dr. Baker," Rick hears the other, more portly officer say in a shy voice as Rick glances up from the file, seeing Sierra give him a friendly smile before going back to reading the teen's file.

"His story checks out, Chief." Andrew continues. "The details match."

Rick flips over two more pages and quickly takes in all the details. Multiple visits to the school nurse, left back a year last year, failing three classes and barely making passing grades in the others, spends a lot of time at in-school suspension, but... nothing indicating... "Um, Chief?" Rick asks, gaining everybody's eyes, but he only looks at the chief. "I'd like to talk to him."

The chief smirks, "Castle, you don't need to do that."

"Sir, you called me on as an expert consultant. There's just something in his school record that tells me there's more to it."

The chief eyes him for a second as he crosses his large arms over his stomach. "Don't suppose it could hurt anything to get the expert on it. Alright, go ahead."

Rick smiles thankfully as the officers slowly start to disperse around him, Chief handing him the statement the police took at the school before moving back into his office. When Sierra gives him a smile and starts to move around him, he stops her. "Sierra?" He asks in a light, friendly voice.

She turns back around with her naturally bright, honest, expectant smile.

"Do you think you could stick around for a minute?" Her brow creases curiously. "I have a hunch I'm going to need you."

Her expression turning serious rather quickly, Sierra gives him a quick, nervous nod. "Yeah, whatever you need."

After giving her a soft smile, he moves across the station, over to the room where the teenager is being held, stopping by the water cooler and pouring a small glass of water.

He wishes he didn't have to lead on this. Usually, he would just tell what he thinks is going on to her, and she'd understand him and take the lead. Right now, everyone's looking to him for the lead. If he's wrong on this, it's him that has to take the brunt of the blame. He could handle taking the brunt of the blame, but not without her. Because when it happened when they were together, she was there to back him up. But she's not.

Trying to rid his brain of the cobwebs crowding his thoughts, he clears his mind the best he can as he opens the door to the small interrogation room, where the goth teenager is sitting leaned back in the opposite chair with his arms crossed. "Hi, John." Rick says as he closes the door behind him.

The teen flicks his eyes up to him with his cold expression, then looks away from him, shifting his crossed arms as he slunks down in the chair. "What do you want?" He mutters.

Rick sets the paper cup down in front of him then moves to pull the other chair out. "I'm Richard Castle," he says in a friendly tone, "I just wanted to talk."

"_Tsha_..." The teen scoffs loudly and shakes his head, not looking Rick in the eye but looking down to the cup. "What do you want my DNA for? I already confessed to killing that old bitch."

Rick pushes up a smirk and nods. "Guess I was acting on instinct." He shrugs his shoulders, lying to the teen. "So, John..." Rick starts as he flips open his school record, then moves the yellow notepad that has his statement on it over, "I'd just like you to tell me exactly what happened." He says, quickly skimming the pad to read the teen's statement.

John looks over to the yellow pad, nodding his head toward it and still not looking at him. "What for? I already told them what happened." He says, pushing himself up when he slinks down in the chair a little too much.

"I just wanted to hear it straight from you, that's all." He says in a light tone, sitting straight up in the chair. "That shouldn't be a problem should it?"

John clenches his jaw hard for a moment. "Alright," he says as he turns to face Rick fully and grabs the small paper cup, throwing the water down his throat. Rick pays close attention as he swallows it, seeing his body flinch and tense as for a split second before he crumples the cup up and tosses it to the floor and finally looks over to him. "I killed her."

Rick remains calm, waiting for the teenager to continue.

"I snuck into her house... and I killed her." He says, leaning forward menacingly. "With my bare hands." He smiles with his menacing tone.

Rick nods, unphased. "Why'd you do it, John?"

John pushes against the edge of the table to throw himself back in the chair, crossing his arms. "Bitch was always yelling at me for skateboarding in her driveway. She didn't even own a car, what'd she need a driveway for? So on Friday night, I got fed up with her _shit." _He says, punching his words. "I snuck into her house... through one of the front windows... surprised her the living room. And I killed her." John stares over to Rick for a moment before leaning forward again. "And then... when it was done..." he smiles again, "I stood there... just to remember the feeling of _killing." _

Rick just keeps looking at him with a calm crease in his brow.

"After I got my fill," John shrugs his shoulders as he leans back, "I snuck back out the window and went back home."

Rick nods, pausing for a moment. "So, why are you confessing now if you killed her on Friday night? If it's remorse, you have a pretty strange way of showing it."

John shrugs again. "Figured you were already onto me. Might as well save you the trouble."

"Well, we appreciate that, John." Rick says, playing along with him as he looks back down to the file, flipping over a page to look back at one of the disciplinary records. His mind clicks things together when he looks down at the bottom of the paper, seeing the parent's signature. "You know, John," Rick starts again as he slowly flips the folder closed and clasps his hands together, "you're seventeen, you're old enough to be tried as an adult."

John just stares at him coldly.

"Chances are... premeditated murder in the first degree... twenty-five years to life, maybe parole in thirty if you stay out of the gangs in prison."

"Big deal," John throws off, slinking down in the chair. "They treat murders like kings in prison anyway."

"Only people who murder cops, John." Rick points out, earning John's attention, seeing a hint of fear in his demeanor. "I don't think they'll treat someone who murdered a defenseless old lady in her own home with the same amount of respect."

After a moment, John chills his expression again and looks away, crossing his arms. "I don't care."

Rick gives John a large nod before lifting his hands up and leaning back. "Well, then I guess that's it. I'll uh... go tell the chief that everything's in order and to go ahead and file the charges with the DA then."

"Good," John says quickly.

"I just uh..." Rick starts slowly, "have one more question for you, John." The teenager doesn't bother looking up to him, but Rick looks at him in close detail, looking down to the cloth collar that everyone else thinks is for decoration. "When was the last time your stepfather beat you?"

The teenager cracks then and there, the cold and gruff exterior he put up falling away in an instant, giving way to the scared, terrified kid underneath.

* * *

A few minutes later, Rick opens the door with a heavy heart, leaving the door open to John, who's trying his hardest to choke back emotional sobs that sound through the entire precinct.

Sierra is the first to come up to him as Rick moves slowly away from the interrogation room. "What happened?" She asks him as officers start to peer into the interrogation room and the chief comes up to stand next to Sierra.

Rick looks up to the chief. "He didn't do it."

Andy, the shorter portly officer comes to stand next to him. "What are you talking about?" He asks him on a laugh. "The kid confessed."

Rick sends the officer a glare, seeing him give Sierra an obvious smirk as if he seems to think she would agree with him. "He confessed to the crime, but he didn't commit it, Sir."

"Why would this kid confess to a murder that he didn't commit?" The chief asks him, his eyes narrowing and his hand motioning toward the room behind him.

"Over his time in high school, he's been to the school nurse for everything from a dislocated shoulder to bruised ribs. Right now, he has bruising around his neck from where his stepfather choked him unconscious that he's trying to hide under that collar he's wearing. That makeup he has on is to cover up the marks from where he got hit in the eye, and I wouldn't be surprised if under those sleeves, he was cutting himself."

"Wait," Andrew says from the other side of the chief, "why would he confess to a murder that he didn't do?"

Rick looks over to him sternly. "Because he'd rather spend the rest of his life in prison than have to spend another day in his own personal Hell at home." He says to the officer before looking back up to the chief. "Sir, he's just a terrified kid who didn't know what else to do and he needs help."

Chief nods commandingly. "I'll have his parents brought in and have a talk with them personally, call social services and get him somewhere safe while I work on a case against his stepfather."

Sierra turns to the chief, "I can start looking him over to catalog his injuries and make sure he's alright."

"Go ahead," the chief says with another commanding nod. Sierra smiles softly then looks back over to Rick with a happy smile as she moves to make her way over to John in interrogation. Rick smiles back at her, silently communicating that they understand each other and why he asked her to stick around as she pats his arm when she moves around him. "Thank you, Dr. Baker." The chief says. "But Castle," he continues, "this kid gave us a detailed statement about the murder."

"Yes," Rick says in a knowing tone. "And since he didn't commit the murder, that can only mean one thing, that he saw it happen."


	30. Chapter 30

It's a slow, quiet day.

Very slow. The store has been empty since ten o'clock this morning, and that was the first one since eight o'clock. The store does well, the old man they bought it from wasn't lying. It's just slow for a Wednesday. She's trying not to look at the clock on the wall to the right of the entrance, but every time she does, thinking that at least twenty must have gone by, it never fails her today that it's only moved three minuets. Reading an old copy of Storm Fall left forgotten and abused behind the computer monitor in the office, Kate sits on the stool behind the register just waiting for something to happen.

Kate grits her teeth as she gets to the last line on the page and flips it, testing the time for the umpteenth time this morning. After seeing the time is barely passed twelve-fifteen, she slumps forward on the stool, groaning loudly. "Ugh..."

She swivels the stool around and leans forward on the glass display counter, setting the paperback down, flattening out the book and resting her cheek on the palm of her hand on a hard sigh. Another paragraph later, the bell attached to the top of the door clangs as it opens, catching Kate's attention. She looks up from her book and sees a teenage girl in a green polo shirt and black slacks walk in with a brown paper bag inside of a white plastic one.

Her brow creases, "Can I help you?" She asks in as friendly a tone as she can muster.

"I have your order," the girl says, lifting up the bag and sliding it onto the counter.

"My order?" Kate asks again, sliding her book off to the side and standing up off the stool.

"Yep," the girl continues, lifting up the receipt, "A double garden burger with curly fries and a salad with French dressing."

Man, that actually sounds really good right now. "Oh," she manages, at a loss until she realizes the food needs to be paid for. "Here, let me pay you."

"Oh, no need, ma'am." The girl waves at her.

Kate looks up from reaching under the counter to start to rummage through her bag, "Excuse me?"

The girl smiles. "You paid already, ma'am, tip included." The girl says with a smile and turns away. "Enjoy."

Kate nods to herself as the bell on the door rings again, "Thanks." She calls out, left standing with a bag of food sitting in front of her. She had to leave for the store without eating, talking with Castle left her drained of energy, and she can't leave the store unattended with her dad not coming back until tonight. And as wrong as it was, the sex they had taken a lot more out of her than she initially thought. And the more the smell of the food inside the bag teases her senses, the more ravenous she gets.

With one motion, she reaches inside and grabs the first container she feels, twisting the bag underneath it to look at the receipt. Holding the container of salad in her hand, she leans down to read the receipt, wondering who sent it to her, until she hears a small, quick sound echo off a surface of the store. Kate moves her eyes away from the bag, looking over to the door to see the parking lot empty and the road quiet, waiting to see if the sound shows itself.

When she hears the sound again, she can tell it's the sound of something hitting the window that faces out toward the dock for the rental boats behind her. She sets the container down on the counter and leans over the back counter to look out the window just in time to see a small pebble hit one of the small, square panes of glass. Her brow creased, Kate blinks and looks out to the dook.

His arm cocked downward across his chest, she sees him sitting on the top of the picnic table at the right end of the dock, clad in a dark grey dress shirt and a charcoal sport coat with dark denim jeans. Kate feels a smile shine across her face when she catches his eyes, looking startled as he drops the handful of pebbles down to the dock below him then lifts his hand up in a nervous looking wave, giving her a smile.

She can feel her heart swell and flutter at the same time as she quickly turns around and grabs the container she took out of the bag, sliding it back inside and grabbing the bag, heading outside through the back door. A chill hits her as she goes outside. It's a windy, cloudy day. She can feel rain in the air, but it has yet to fall. But she can tell it's getting ready to by the dark, grey, lumpy look in the clouds.

As she strolls down the stairs, brushing her hair behind her ear as it whips into her face with the wind, she looks over to see him leaning forward against his knees as he sits on the surface of the picnic table.

"I suppose I have you to thank for this." She says to him as she walks toward him, gesturing to the food by lifting the bag up.

Rick smiles somewhat nervously and slides down to the dock and off the table, brushing his palms down his thighs. "I figured I now's a good a time as any to make up for the dinner I skipped out on last night." He says, trying to keep his tone under control. He has too much on his mind that his head is starting to ache. His skin feels touchy, like the inside of his clothes are made out of sandpaper.

Kate smiles honestly as she steps up to him, the wind dying down to a gentle breeze. She looks into his eyes, seeing something that makes her focus, want to make sure she's really seeing it. He looks... like he's nervous, like a teenage boy on his very first date almost. "That's really sweet of you, Castle."

Rick forces another smile and looks down to the planks of wood on the dock. "You have time to sit down?" He asks, motioning to the table behind him with his shoulder.

She's quick to nod, giving him another smile. "Sure, I have time." She quickly reassures him with a light nod, moving around him to the other side of the table.

Kate sits down in the center of the bench across from him, setting the bag on the bench to her left, taking out her salad from the bag while Rick sits down on the other side of her, clutching his hands together tightly. She watches him closely as he leans forward, seeming to wring his hands together as best he can with his fingers entwined. She looks up to his eyes, trying not to get noticed examining him as she loudly pries open the plastic lid off her salad, and notices the nervous glint in his eyes.

"So, how's the case going?" She asks, wanting to just break the silence with something neutral as she pokes the prongs of the fork through the plastic wrapper.

He looks up to her and gives her an awkward nod. "Fine," he starts in a tight voice. There's a pause as Kate opens the packet of dressing and squirts it over the salad, then an even thicker pause when she stirs it up. He seems to take his cue to continue when she jabs the first piece of lettuce. "The chief of police called me this morning." He states in a usual, casual tone. "He's a pretty good guy," he says with a smile to himself. "He said that someone confessed to the murder."

Kate's brow knits as she shifts the salad to one side of her mouth. "Really?"

"Yeah, which didn't make any sense to me, because the case has all the markers of going cold." He explains in a heavy voice.

Her heart tugs, a cold, sinking feeling going low into her gut. "So, there wasn't any evidence then? The canvas didn't turn up anything?"

Rick shakes his head as he looks down to the table. "No, the scene was clean, they weren't getting anything back from the canvas, nothing was taken. So when chief told me that someone confessed, it didn't make sense to me." Kate watches as his face twists into concentration, the looks he gets when he used to stare at the murder board with her when they were in an impossible situation. He was always great in those situations. "So, long story short, the kid who confessed didn't do it. He just wanted to go to prison to get away from an abusive stepfather."

Kate stops mid-chew, having to replay what she just heard. "How'd you find that out?"

Rick shakes his head meagerly, the firm expression falling. "His school record showed a report from the school nurse when he went in for a shoulder injury. When the nurse asked him if it happened at home, apparently, the kid got furious with her and he was suspended from school for three days. The form that was signed about it had to be signed by a legal guardian and the person who signed it was a male with a different last name."

She can feel her heart flutter wildly around her chest as admiration quickly swells inside of her. "You got that from just one form?"

Rick looks up to her with a humble shrug of one of his shoulders. "Well, he kind of overplayed the whole 'I'm an evil, ruthless killer' bit when I asked him what happened." She fights a face splitting smile when he meets her eyes. After a second, he looks away again. "But since he gave the police a statement about the murder-"

"He must've seen it happen." She finishes on instinct. She looks up from her salad after getting another fork full, seeing he's met her eyes again.

He nods as he continues. "He did, but I don't think it's going to turn up anything. He said that the killer was wearing all black, had a hood pulled up, was anywhere between five foot seven and five foot eleven, and could have been a man or woman and that he couldn't tell."

"So," Kate starts for him, "they're calling the case random?"

Rick shakes his head and looks to his side and out toward the lake next to them, seeming to stop and listen to the sounds of the nature around them. "They said they'd call me when something new came up and I said I'd do what I could." He says heavily. She can tell neither of them like the outcome. He's been with her through all of it, he never liked having to just step back for a while. She knew that, understood it. "Until then, the chief gave a very long, very loud, and very scary talk to the kid's stepfather while Sierra cataloged his injuries for social services."

Kate feels a heavy smile tug at the ends of her lips, wanting to be glad this kid, whoever he is, got the help he needed. But at the same time, wishing she could have been there to help him, to back him up like he always was. "It's great that you could help, at least."

She watches out of the corner of her eye while eating her salad as his expression twists not into nervousness, but into some kind of anguish she's not familiar with on him. "I uh..." he starts in a shakey voice, "I just can't imagine that kind of..."

Kate stops her fork, setting it down inside the container and letting her hands fall into her lap. "That kind of what, Castle?" She asks in a soft voice.

His eyes harden in a form of anger she's only seen once before. As she watches him, she sees his hands wring together again, his knuckles turning white. "Abandonment." He says through clenched teeth. "I mean," he says, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes, "this kid was more afraid to go back to his own home than he..." he cuts himself off on a hard sigh. "He was willing to go to prison for the rest of his life... just to get away from his own parents."

Her heart tugs at the heaviness of his voice. This is why she wishes she could have been there. Just... all of it, she wishes she could have been there for. "It must be hard."

All she hears is his breath leave his nostrils in hard pants. "Kate, how do you remember your childhood?" He asks, pretty much out of nowhere.

Looking up to him, seeing he's looking to her for an honest answer, that it wasn't just a question levied at her to change the subject, she smiles and gives him a shrug, picking up her plastic fork again. "I don't know, I had it pretty easy, Castle." She says to him, taking another few pieces of lettuce, a carrot, and a slice of cucumber into her mouth. "I mean," she continues, shifting the food, "both my parents were lawyers, we were upper-middle class. I went to a private school. I-"

"No, no," Rick slowly stops her, "that's not what I mean. I mean..." he struggles, leaning over his hands for a moment, "when you think back to your childhood, what's the... what's the first thing you think of?"

Swallowing her food, she thinks and gets an image in her mind, a warm feeling buzzing through her. "I guess... when I'd get sick or... when I was having trouble with a boy or drama with my friends or whatever...my mom would take time off work and we'd just stay home and, you know... watch TV or we'd... go to the park, go shopping together. Sometimes my dad would take us up to his cabin." She tells him with a warm smile. "I don't know, I think of that kind of stuff, Castle." She shrugs, stabbing her salad again, casually moving to go back to eating until she notices his expression falling, his eyes drifting shut and his neck craning. "Why, what..." she hesitates, sensing something go wrong in his demeanor, "what about you?"

As she takes another mouthful of her salad, Rick stares at the lake to his side with a hard glare. There are two forces working against him, making him indecisive. There's anger and frustration in his heart, with fear and cowardice of she might think of it that's keeping him from speaking honestly. "You know," he starts quickly in a blurt, looking back over to her, "I never really gave it much thought until I had Alexis." He tells her, giving her a softly arched brow. "When you're growing up, you just sort of... think that whatever you're given is how things are supposed to be."

Once Kate realizes what he's saying, or what he's trying to say, what he's trying to convey, her heart seizes.

"You know, I thought I was ready for her." He says with a smile, his eyes softening when he looks back up to her, but they soon fall away, drifting into faraway memory. "I thought I couldn't love her anymore than I already did when she was just a... blue line on a pregnancy test in the hands of a frantic freaked out redhead." He takes a pause, and she can tell that he's replaying the memory of Alexis's birth in his mind by the soft, knowing smile that plays across his lips. "Then I heard her cry for the first time... and then saw her for the first time, got to hold her for the first time, saw her look up at me for the first time..." his voice sounds so heavy, she just wants to wrap her arms around him. When his eyes start to harden, she can tell instantly that something is darkening his mind. "It wasn't until..." he struggles, "until Meredith made it clear that she wasn't as interested in Alexis as she was in Meredith that... I..."

On a breath that makes her aware of just how closed her throat feels, she reaches over the table and puts her hand on top of his.

His eyes find her hand, and it makes him sick, knowing that taking the gesture of comfort would just be admitting that he needs it. That would only make it worse. "I just couldn't understand why she didn't love our child as much as I did. And no matter what I did, I couldn't get her to see it. So, she left." He says on a long sigh.

Kate nods for him, petting her thumb across his knuckles in a show of support. "Seeing you with Alexis was the first thing I fell for, you know."

The statement seems to go unnoticed as his eyes harden with memory again. "When Alexis first started preschool," he starts, adjusting his seating on the bench, looking up to her again, "I'd pack her lunch every day, and I'd drop her off every day... pick her up every day. After Meredith left me, I would pick Alexis up from preschool, I'd bring her home, make her a snack, all the usual stuff, but... a few days after Meredith filed for divorce, I'd bring Alexis home and she'd uh..." he says, his voice shaking, "she'd just... ask me to play with her."

Despite how much emotion he's showing, she can't help but smile warmly, imagining the man she loves playing happily with a four-year-old little girl, playing house or having a tea party.

"Every day... for almost a month, I'd bring her home and she'd just ask if I could play with her." He says, taking a pause as his eyes blink rapidly a few times, looking back down to the table. "After a month, I realized what was going on."

Kate stops, pulling her hand away. "What was that?"

He looks over to her with a furrow in his brow. "After the news got out that Meredith had cheated on me, some of the kids in Alexis's class were picking on her because she didn't have a mom anymore." His eyes fall away again, his mind drifting back into his thoughts for a moment before he looks back up to her. "Kids don't ask to talk about their day with you, Kate." He explains, his expression softening. "They ask you to play with them."

Kate can only feel the smile that goes across her face as both sad, loving, and honest. And as his eyes fall away again, she can't help but wonder what he did.

"So that's what I did," he continues, his eyes still far away. "And that's how Alexis knows I'd do anything for her... because every time she asked me to play with her, I would."

Kate tries catching his eyes, leaning her head down but to no avail. He just keeps staring off into nowhere. "What'd you do?" When he doesn't respond, she tries again. "When you were growing up?"

She watches as he swallows thickly. "I wrote."


	31. Chapter 31

It rained last night.

Not very hard, but everything is still wet, so Kate sits on the top step on his porch. His coffee is sitting next to her while she cradles her own in her lap. Beth and Barbra were happy to see her before they quickly started hounding her for details on a murder case that she has no details of. It was antagonizing in some way. Solving murders was her thing, it was their thing. All they could ask was if he had any new clues or suspects, it was only him. She misses that part of them. Working cases, tracking down killers... it's how they fell in love.

Sasha isn't outside and she couldn't hear any barking from inside when she pulled up. She's starting to worry that he didn't know she was coming by again this morning, that they were back to their normal routine of her bringing him coffee every morning and just didn't wait up for her. After she had to run back inside the store yesterday to take care of a party of retirees stocking up on supplies before heading out camping, he left with the same nervous smile he came with and snuck back around to the parking lot to drive off.

She never did get the chance to wrap her arms around him. He just sounded like he needed it. Him talking about how much he loved Alexis and how he would play with her every day after school when she was little, she always feels a smile creep onto her face thinking about what a great father he is. Alexis always seems to bring out the absolute best in him, the man that at first she was surprised to see under all that playboy bravado, childish and dark-humored jokes, all that feigned ego and arrogance.

It's hard to see him as any other type of man now.

Giving into her smile and letting it overtake her, she lifts her cup up to her lips and takes a warm sip against the chilly wind that cuts through the air. It's probably going to rain again today. Kate sets her cup back down to her lap and hears a faint jangle of a dog tag coming from the woods. Her brow knits, thinking that maybe Sasha had gotten out and ran away. After all, he did say that she used to be a runner.

Kate climbs off the top step, pushing herself off the porch and stepping away from the house until she can get an eye line toward the trail. She sees him and her heart expands in fear when she sees him limping heavily, his gym pants and half his dark grey tanktop covered in mud, his bare arms glistening with sweat with the back of his forearms caked in dead leaves and mud. Sasha is close by his side panting, her head tilted down and walking slowly beside him on a leash.

She takes off in a quick jog across his yard as he holds his arm across his stomach, a crippling limp in his left side. "What happened?" She calls as she jogs up to him.

"Ah..." he groans, lifting out his arm that's holding the leash.

Kate takes his signal quickly and takes the leash from him, reaching down give Sasha a quick scratch behind her ears before putting herself into his side, draping his arm across her shoulders and wrapping her own around his back and grasping his side, pulling his weight into her. "You okay?" She asks on a small chuckle as she grasps his forearm that hangs over her shoulder.

"I'm fine." He says through grinding teeth, hopping along with her, his back and his leg and his neck all still throbbing with a dull yet very sharp ache.

"What happened, you get attacked by Big Foot or something?" She asks him, helping him make his way toward the front entrance of his lakehouse.

"I thought you didn't believe in that stuff." He asks back on a pant that matches Sasha's, who's panting by Kate's side, the leash fully slacked.

"My dad and I tend to hear a lot of stories from our regulars, Castle." She says with a smile, moving her hand up his side to hold him more securely, trying to take more weight for him. "So, if it wasn't Big Foot, what happened, huh?" She asks him again, turning her head to look at him as he faces ahead. Her lips are just inches away from his jawline, she can practically feel his rough stubble against the tip of her nose.

"Morning work out routine," he starts as he hops closer to the steps of his porch, "five miles, then as many pull-ups as I can handle."

Kate laughs, feeling her breath fan off his cheek. The closeness hasn't hit her yet. "Pull-ups?"

"I got up to twenty," he pants again as they make it to the driveway, "then the branch decided that twenty was enough." She feels honestly bad for him then. She lets go of his wrist that drapes over her shoulder and moves it to his chest, petting over his heart for a moment. "Branch gave out and I hit my leg wrong."

"Are you okay? Nothing's broken, is it?" She asks him, her worry for him flaring across her skin.

"No, I'm fine," he answers through gritted teeth. "I had Sasha with me, after all." Kate smiles while she grasps his wrist again, looking down to Sasha who still has her tongue hanging out as she strolls along side her. "I haven't seen much of her the past two days, so I decided to take her with me this morning."

"Here," she says as she walks him toward the steps of the porch.

"Be careful," he strains, looking down to the first step as he lifts his foot. "The gutter above the steps is loose so the first few steps get really slippery when it rains."

She slowly eases him up the steps until they reach the top. Once they stop outside his door, Sasha collapses onto her side next to them, out of breath. Rick stops and turns around, looking down to his dog with an open smile, while Kate continues to hold his weight against her. "I can't carry you both inside at the same time, Castle."

"Ah," Rick says and waves his hand at her, seeing Sasha move her eyes up to look at him without lifting her head off of the cool wood, "she'll be fine."

Kate nods and looks turns her head to look at him, her eyes roving over his features for a quick second. "What about you?"

"Yeah," he answers her quickly, his brow pinching as he catches his breath. He turns his head to meet her eyes but is startled back for a second after he feels his nose brush against her's. Both of their breaths hitch loudly as they lean back. Rick stops for a moment, wanting to shake it off until their eyes meet. And it isn't until then that he's aware of the fact that her supportive grip on his side has slackened, her body is turned in toward him now, and her hand that was holding his wrist has fallen away and has ended up on the center of his chest.

"I'll um..." he struggles to answer as neither of them moves or even gesture to separate, "I'll be fine." He says in a strained voice. "I'm... feeling better already, actually."

Kate's eyes narrow as she smiles for a split second before her tightening lungs force another breath out of her tingling body. "Good."

Rick's chest swells, his heart racing. All the voices of doubt and heartbreak are still there, still stopping him. But as she flattens her hand on his chest and her arm slowly snakes around his side, her palm sliding up his spine, he can't give them a voice of their own. Her eyes flick away from his eyes and down to his lips. He knows her, they've kissed for hours and he knows her. Looking down to his lips was always the last sign she gave him before moving in. "Kate-"

The soft timber of his voice is the trigger that sends her forward, thrusting her lips onto his in a firm, passionate kiss. They both suck in a long breath when their lips meet, sitting firmly against each other, frozen completely still and completely void of thought, except for that of the feeling of their lips. Her unexpected kiss has taken them both over.

Kissing her again just feels so incredible. Everything about it, from the softness of her lips to how perfectly they seem to meld against his, everything just feels... right.

Rick opens his lips, moves his hand to the small of her back and pulls her body flush against his chest, taking her lips again in another slow, very passionate kiss that feels like the gasoline poured on a campfire whose last flame just went out while the embers are still warm. When he pulls her against him, her arm freezes and she's left holding it up over his shoulder until her body melts against him and she drapes it over him and around his neck.

"Mmm..." she moans in a small squeak into his mouth, her legs turning to jelly the harder he seems to kiss her.

His arm moves around the middle of her back in a vice, pulling more and more of her weight against him until she's practically lifted off her feet with hour tight he's holding her against him, kissing her as passionately as he can.

She breaks the kiss and turns her head to get more of him and to deepen the kiss. She moves back in and takes his lips again in a deep, longing kiss that steals what little air she has left until his hands grab onto her sides in a flash. Before she knows it, she's shoved off of him hard. Her body drained of life in that instant, the world stopping, she feels locked up, the only thing going through her mind is the loss of his lips and his body and arms. She hears him let out a hard, frustrated breath and it seems to kick start her mind. Her eyes flutter open and she can see him looking down to the ground with an etched expression.

Her veins flood with shame and guilt in that moment for digging them down further into the pit of complication that she's already dug them in too far to even see the light above. "I-I'm..." she tries, struggling to keep her voice steady over her racing heart. "I'm sorry." She finally gets out, moving her hands out from around his shoulders and dragging them down the firm expanse of his chest, his pants and his arms still caked in wet mud.

She can hear him swallow, "I thought you said the next time we kissed, it would have to be for the right reason." He begins, feeling his hands tremble against her sides.

Kate gives him a nod, noticing he's still holding her and taking it as permission to keep caressing his chest. "I also said that I missed you." She answers back in a soft, deep voice, not feeling as if she has to put any distance between them now. She watches him intently as he keeps his eyes fixed on a point on the ground, his brow set in a hard line. Moving her hands sensuously over his chest, she starts, "And I do miss you, Rick."

He gives her a hard sigh as he cranes his neck. "Kate..."

"Why won't you just give me another chance?" She finally asks him in a tone that stings with emotion as she takes a step closer to him. "Why are you still fighting me so hard?"

"It's not that simple." He states plainly, grasping her sides but hesitating to push her away.

"Rick, I _love _you." She says, nodding her head over to try and catch his eyes. She sees the words have no effect on him and it stings, knowing how much hearing him say those words to her broke her every time she heard them. "You don't know what it's like to love someone the way I love you and have them just push you away."

She can feel him twinge under her palms and it startles her. His face hardens and he looks back up to her, his gaze lidded and cold.

But when he looks up to her with this cold expression, she hears what she just said and sees him standing in her living room in her apartment in Manhattan, his brow arched and his eyes glimmering with tears, pouring his heart out to her, even after everything she put him through. She remembers it clearly, down to the twisting feeling in her gut. She can even remember exactly what he said. Her head nods down and she feels another cold shiver hit her with the wind. "Rick, if this is how you felt for all those years, how did you manage to stick around for so long?"

Rick's muscles stiffen under her touch as she shuffles closer to him again. "Because I know what I was waiting for was worth it." He answers her in a calm, steady voice, looking into her eyes as he says it. She meets his gaze, feeling her body tingle and flutter. He lets out another soft sigh as he looks away. "Kate, I don't want you to think that I don't miss what we had." Her heart bursts at that, feeling as if it's the first instance of hope for them. "I don't want you to think that... you leaving me poisoned the time we spent together..."

_It's just the time we spent together made it harder to bear, _he thinks to himself, too weak and vulnerable to say it.

He swats away the thought and slides his hands down her sides to hang onto her hips. "I just need time, okay?"

Her heart falls into the pit of her stomach, but she's shaking her head after a moment. "No."

His eyes drift shut and he leans back. "Kate-"

"I don't _want _any more time apart from you, Rick." She says demandingly, stepping into him again. "I want you back. So just..." she struggles to contain all of her emotion, tempered with anger and frustration, "just tell me what it is you need from me. Just tell me what I have to do to get you to believe that we can make it work again and I'll do it."

"Kate, I-" he begins, but cuts himself when he hears her phone start ringing in her pocket. His face falls into a dull expression of impatience. Kate's eyes drift shut and she starts to shake her head. "Some things never change, I guess."

"Uhh..." Kate sighs audibly, her eyes drifting shut as she reaches for her phone. "If this is Ryan, I swear I'm going to kill someone."

Rick's hands fall off her sides finally and she takes it as her cue to turn away from him as she answers the call from her dad. "Hey, Dad."

While she's on the phone, Rick carefully bends down to get Sasha's attention, who's still laying on her side down onto the deck. She lifts her head up off the porch to look back at her master and he nods his head back toward the door. As he opens it, Sasha wags her long, stringy tail once and pushes herself up off the porch and slowly drags herself inside.

"No, I'll talk to him, it's fine, it's important, after all." Kate continues on the phone, turning around and seeing Rick has opened the door and is waiting in the doorway. She forces a smile, silently apologizing for having to be on the phone. He lifts his hand and moves inside, closing the door behind him.

* * *

It started sprinkling some time around eleven o'clock. Rick is in his office that overlooks the lake, brooding out the window. Sasha is sound asleep on the loveseat next to his desk.

He wanted to tell her. He just didn't have it in him. He just had to give into her for that moment. Feeling her body against him, tasting her lips again. Yesterday took a lot out of him, but it wasn't in the moment that it drained him. He knows that if she'd just kept on him, maybe even if she had just kept sitting there with that soft, aching look in her big brown eyes, he would have spilled it all out. He knows a part of him needs to... that it needs to be her that hears all of it. Not even for the sake of their dead relationship she's spent all her time trying to bring back. Just for his sake, a final hurdle to tell the woman who's been next to impossible to talk to everything he's never told anyone before.

His phone buzzes next to his laptop on his desk for a few seconds, followed by Sasha's tags jangling as she lifts her head off the couch to inspect the noise. Rick moves across his office, reaches down and scratches Sasha's ear and earning a deep moan from her as she falls back asleep, and answers his phone. "Castle."

"Hi," her light, naturally happy voice sounds on the other end.

Rick feels one part of him relax and untense and another part of him tighten with nervousness. "Sierra."

"Hi," she says again, and Rick can practically hear her smile split across her face by the sound of her voice. "I was just calling to check in."

Rick smiles as he falls down onto the loveseat next to Sasha, who quickly stands up to turn around and lay her head down on his leg. "Check in? Why am I in trouble?" He asks in a humorous tone.

"Ha," Sierra chuckles lightly, "no, not at all, nothing like that. It's just you were pretty upset when you left the station yesterday. I wanted to make sure you were alright today since I wasn't going to see you."

Rick feels his heart ice over. "Yeah, I'm fine." He says in as natural a tone as he can manage, petting his fingers through Sasha's thick fur. But on the other end of the line, Sierra's silence, knowing who's on the other end, probably just sitting down and smiling, it pulls it out of him. "It's just if there's one thing on the planet I hate more than anything, it's an abusive parent."

"Yeah," Sierra says in a small voice. "You must take parenting pretty seriously."

Rick shakes his head to himself as he focuses on Sasha's soft fur as his fingers run through it on her back. "I just love my daughter like crazy, it doesn't really have anything to do with proving anything to anyone." He explains, taking a moment for himself. "I just know from the moment I held her that I'd push her out of the way of anything to save her and the only regret I'd have is not being able to do it again." He hears Sierra let out a small, breathy chuckle. "I guess I just don't understand the kind of parents that would just stand by and watch."

"Well," Sierra starts again, "Rick, if you need someone to talk to, you can call me. I mean," she pauses while Rick can hear her smile again, "I'm not exactly a professional. Well, not any- you..." she stops on a sigh, gathering herself, "you can call me any time, Rick. Dead people aren't getting any deader... any deaderness... any _more _dead." She finally finds the words.

It's then that Rick's heart stops him. "I appreciate that Sierra, but... um..." he hesitates, "I'm not really looking for someone to confide in right now."

He can feel Sierra's heart fall from here, her natural ability, or inability, to exude her emotions extending through the phone. "Rick, did I do something wrong?" She asks him, her voice honest as it almost quakes with fear that she's guilty of something.

"No." He says in a soft voice to try and ease the pain, "that's not it at all."

"Okay, it's just that the other night, you seemed like you really needed someone to talk to and now, you're-"

"The other night," he starts to talk over her, not wanting for her to get too far down her own well that she gets lost, "is the problem... actually."

"What..." Sierra begins, "what do you mean? Did I say something?"

"No, Sierra, it wasn't you... okay?" He says, looking out the window on the other side of his office. "I promise."

"Okay, it wasn't me. So... what happened?"

Rick forces out a breath from his struggling lungs and looks back down to Sasha, who's fast asleep and oblivious to the whole situation apart from the fact that her human master is in an unusual state of emotional struggle right now and won't let her head leave his leg and won't let him stop petting her. "The other night... that morning, I... sort of promised Beckett that I'd pick her up for dinner so we could talk."

When that doesn't give Sierra enough of the pieces, she prods further. "Okay, so was it something _she _said then?"

"No... I actually forgot about it when... when you and I went out. And um... when I didn't pick her up, she went to the diner and saw us together."

"Oh... oh my god, Rick, I'm _so _sorry, I feel terrible!" Sierra begins to apologize profusely. "You should have told me, I would have been happy to drop you off earlier."

"No, Sierra, it's wasn't your fault. None of it was. It was mine." She lets out another breath as a silence falls over the line. "So," he begins after a long pause in the conversation, "I'm just trying not to... I just don't want to give her anything to worry about."

"Oh-" she starts, "okay... I understand."

"So," Rick says, moving his hand down Sasha's ribs and grabbing a fistful of her fur on her chest, "see you later?"

"Sure, anytime." Sierra says and hangs up after another few seconds.

* * *

Her dad wanted to give her the night off but she didn't feel like going home early tonight. It was a busy day, getting inspected for their new license and hooking up their new security system to a higher quality video, accessible from their phones. Kate is in the office, going over their books one last time before the next inventory is due to arrive and is about to lock up for the night.

As rain starts to clatter softly against the windowpanes behind her, Kate closes her laptop and slips it into her bag on the floor, then stands up from the chair, grabbing her phone off the desk when she hears the bell on the door start to ring. Impatient and wanting the night to end, Kate rolls her eyes, lets out a frustrated sigh, and turns out of the office to head out to the floor.

"I'm sorry, but we're about..." her words fall when she sees a familiar, short and wavy-haired blonde standing in the door, dressed in a pair of teal medical scrubs, running shoes, and a very nervous but very natural looking smile engulfing her features.

"U-umm..." Sierra starts nervously as she takes one large step into the store, letting the door swing closed behind her, nervously wringing her hands together. She looks up to Kate again and her lips pinch into a thin line, "Hi."

Kate's heart hardens at the sight of the woman, a deep coldness chilling her. "I'm sorry, but I was just about to lock up. We're closing for the night." Kate says in a deep tone.

"Oh no, I-I'm uh..." Sierra smiles again, her eyes squinting as she motions around the store with her hand, her shoulders tight. "I'm not shopping, I just didn't get off until six and I didn't know your number and this was the only time I could get off and I..." she rambles nervously, her voice shaking, "I just wanted to-to uh... to talk," she finally says, looking up to her, her eyes shaking as Kate stands near the counter with a cold exterior about her, "is all... just talk."

Kate gives the woman a slow nod. "Bout what?"

Sierra sighs in a small breath, another smile splitting her features as she looks away, shuffling her feet. She wrings her hands together again before setting her jaw firmly and then looks back up to her. Sierra gives her a soft smile and shakes her head. "Rick and I aren't interested in each other." She says, throwing her hands out to her sides.

Kate stops, her reassurance having no effect on her. The cold chill in her heart over this woman is still there.

"I mean, I _was... _obviously," Sierra says with a raise in her brow. "I mean, he's really cute and he's just such a great guy, but..." she continues, probably having no idea that Kate's nails are digging small crescents into her palms, "I never should have gone out on that date with him and I wanted to cancel it when I heard about you from Beth, but... it's not every day a small town girl like me gets asked out by a guy like Richard Castle." She says with another bright smile that only lasts a split second before she looks up to Kate and sees the firm, etched, serious expression she's facing.

Kate just gives her a nod, "Don't worry about it," she says, wanting the woman just to go away.

Sierra just shakes her head and smiles again. "And really, don't blame him for forgetting about the dinner plans you made." Kate's heart skips, knowing that the only way she could know is if he told her. "If anything, you can blame me. I was the one that wanted him to keep talking. It's not his fault that he forgot. Neither of us were thinking."

Kate lifts her hand in a small, almost unnoticable gesture. "I said don't worry about it."

"No, it's just that he felt really bad about it and it... almost _entirely _my fault," Sierra exclaims with a roll of her eyes, "and I'm sure if I'd just stopped that he would have remembered your plans and..." She trails off when she looks up to notice that none of what she says shifts Kate's cold, angry demeanor toward her, "and... that's not why you're upset with me." She finishes in a much more tempered tone. "Is it?"

She grimaces angrily, hatred flashing through her like a strobe light. She turns to face the woman and stares at her. "Why is it that he talks to you and not me?" She asks in a low, steady, but very maddening tone.

Sierra smiles softly and nods. "I figured that's what you would be upset about." She says to herself.

"That man was my partner for four years before we started seeing each other." Kate continues, her voice starting to edge with emotion. "We dated for an entire year and _every _time I would try and get him to talk about our relationship, all he would do is smirk. How can he talk to you and not me?" She asks the woman, her eyes burning.

Sierra gives Kate a nod, shrugging her shoulders. "People tell me I'm easy to talk to." It does nothing to stifle the anger still boiling in Kate's system. "I was actually studying to be a psychiatrist before my marriage imploded. Then I didn't really feel it was right to go around giving people life advice when I couldn't even keep my own marriage intact, so... after that I went into medical school."

"And what does that mean for me?" She demands, her eyes still burning. "That I'm _not _easy to talk to? I _love _him!"

Sierra lifts her hands up to motion for Kate to slow down. "Kate," she says softly, her natural smile still shining on her face, "in the four years you worked together... you know, before you started dating... did he ever really pressure you to give him a chance? Did he ever say anything serious about wanting a real relationship with you or..." Kate feels her heart clench at where she sees the woman going, "did he just wait for you to be ready?"

Kate shakes her head, denying it as she reaches under her shirt to grab the chain that the engagement ring still hangs from. "I was ready." She fights back, pulling on the chain and taking the ring in her finger and thumb. "Understand? I was ready to marry him."

Sierra's smile brightens as she lifts her hands back up. "I never said that you weren't, Kate. All I'm saying is that after that long of letting you decide where and when the next step of your relationship happens, can you really hold it against him for being apprehensive?"

"But I _tried_... okay? I _tried _to get him to talk to me and he wouldn't do it. So how can he talk to you about what he wants and not me?" Kate demands again.

Sierra just smiles, "Because what I say and think doesn't matter." It makes Kate stop in her anger. "That's why he was talking to me. Because I'm not part of the equation. All I did was listen to him."

"You listened to him?" She parrots back, her jaw clicking. "Are you saying I don't listen to him?"

Sierra's shoulders tighten and she looks away. "Did... you listen to him when he told you that he loved you?"

"That was _different!" _

"No," Sierra stops her with a soft voice. "It wasn't."

"What, are you _trying _to stop us from getting back together, is that it?" Kate angrily pleads.

"No, Kate," Sierra says with another soft smile. "That's not why I'm here at all."

"Well, then tell me how I get him back." Kate demands, tossing her hand toward her. "If you're so easy to talk to and you've been talking with him, then you'd know. Tell me what I need to do to get him back. Just tell me what I need to do to prove to him that I love him."

"That's," Sierra stops her, lifting her hands up to get her to slow down again, "what I came here to tell you." She takes in a long breath and tries to get Kate to slow down and listen, holding her eyes for a moment. "There's nothing that you can do."

"No, _no, _don't tell me that!"

"He has to believe that you love him if he's going to take you back, Kate, and he has to come to it on his own."

Kate lets out a struggling breath, pacing away from Sierra and looking up at the ceiling with burning eyes. "Why is he pushing me away this much? Why is it so hard for him to just give me another chance? I know that I made a mistake when I left him. Why is it that he can take his ex-wife back after a divorce but not me?"

Sierra smiles again, nodding her head before tilting it off to the side. "You... still don't know, do you?"

Kate stops and turns to face her again, her jaw clenching and teeth grinding. "Know what?"

Her smile brightens. "Kate... you're the first person in Rick's entire life to love him for who he is, to not expect anything out of him or want anything out of him other than just him and his heart. You were the first person in his life to want to be with him just for him and not anything else." Kate gives the woman a stiff nod as her eyes flood with tears. "But when you left, it proved to him that it still wasn't enough."

She can feel a tear leave a trail down her cheek as it falls from her eye.

"For the first time in his life, he had someone that was with him for just him and they still left. Kate... Rick could go through both of his divorces all over again and it wouldn't cause him as much pain as what he felt when you left him."

"I know that I was wrong for leaving, okay?" Kate demands emotionally as she takes a few steps toward her. "I know that, but I never stopped loving him!"

"Kate, I'm trying to get you to see that you broke Rick's heart on a level he's never felt before." Sierra explains. "The fact that he still loves you won't matter if he feels you're going to cause him that much pain again in the future." Kate can feel another large tear fall out off her lashes. "He needs to be able to do something he's never been able to do with anyone growing up and that's to have faith in the fact that someone can love him for who he is. Because as long as he keeps questioning that, he'll always be on the lookout for you to leave him again."

Her heart shivers painfully behind her straining lungs. "That's... that's why he asked me about my childhood yesterday?"

Sierra's eyes soften even more than they already are and she gives Kate a nod. "I think I'll let him tell you about it."

Kate sniffles, drawing in a long, congested breath as she rolls her shoulders back and shoves the tracks of her tears off her cheeks. "So... what needs to happen then?" She asks her. "Because I want him back. I want us back."

Sierra smiles again. "I think he just needs to be reminded of why he felt risking his heart with you in the first place was worth it." Kate nods as her eyes fall away, her heart unclenching as the warmth of reassurance ebbs through her. "And don't worry, Kate." Sierra says after a moment. "Once he's reminded of it, he'll take you back in a heartbeat."

When Kate gives Sierra a firm nod, Sierra smiles and turns out the door. As Sierra is opening the door, the sound of the rain falling outside echoing into the store, Kate stops her. "Sierra?"

She stops in the doorway, looking back around to her.

Kate looks up to her with her heart in her throat. "Thank you."

Sierra's natural and happy smile brightens across her features as she lifts her hand up to give Kate a small wave before jogging out into the rain.

* * *

_A/N: Chapter was kinda long. Hope you're not mad. Whadya think? /;]_


	32. Chapter 32

It's storming outside now. It has been all night. Sasha doesn't mind the lake. She'll dive in if Rick tells her to and enjoy it. But she was curled up in a terrified ball underneath his covers by his feet all night once the first boom of thunder rattled the house. He tried letting her out when he got up as Alexis was leaving for school, but he couldn't even get her passed the kitchen. Big baby was so scared of the thunder and lightning. Sasha's never had any accidents in the house thankfully, but he's hoping it dies down soon enough so he can let her out, because right now, it's nearing eight o'clock, and she's still curled up in a ball under his desk.

He's on the floor, laying on his back with his head resting against the curl of her furry body, keeping her company. It's going to be the first morning he hasn't worked out since moving out here, but seeing his dog this scared makes him not want to leave her. With his eyes closed and his hands clasped together over his stomach, Sasha pulls in a breath and lets it out in a huff across the back of his neck as another sudden crack of thunder shakes the ceiling.

It's when the sound of a car door closing makes it passed the pouring rain against the house and the thunder in the clouds that Sasha perks her head up off the floor. Rick pops his eyes open and leans up off of Sasha's side, "That's Beckett," he says to his dog as he starts to climb up off the floor. Rick stops and leans back down, putting his hand around Sasha's ear. "Wanna go see Beckett, huh?"

Sasha just whimpers and curls herself back up in a ball as another low roll of thunder rumbles in the distance.

"Big baby," he says and darts out of his upstairs office, going down the hall and galloping down the stairs to meet her at the door. His bare feet hit the hardwood floor of the downstairs, feeling light-hearted and casual as he quickly makes his way passed the kitchen and into the living room to look out the textured window of the front door.

He sees her just as she's making the last few steps up the stone walkway, clad in a pair of black jeans and a black jacket, her head tilted and her hair down, clutching two white paper cups with brown paper sleeves against her stomach as her hair whips in front of her face with the harsh wind. His heart flutters slightly against the walls of his chest when he sees her, but everything stops when he watches her take the first step up his porch and he sees her fall out of his view.

"Agh!" He can hear her grunt loudly over the thunder and rain and the clatter of her body against the steps.

Rick reacts quickly by unlocking the deadbolt of the door and flinging the door open, seeing her fallen forward against the wooden steps, water running on her head from above where the rain gutter is broken, the two paper cups lying empty on their sides on the steps. Rick goes out to her as quickly as he can, feeling the cold, wet wind wash over his face while Kate tries to climb to her feet.

"Here, I got you," he says to her, going down a few steps and reaching down, taking her upper body in his arms and pulling her up, her black leather jacket and black jeans already soaked from the rain and the water pouring on her from the broken gutter. Kate clammers to her feet while Rick pulls her up right in his arms, keeping her steady. Her cold hands clutch his forearm going across her chest, trying to push passed the sting going into her thighs from where she hit the stairs.

He pulls her up the porch as quickly, but gently as he can, holding her close to his chest. Once she's on her feet, he keeps her held into his side as he ushers her inside.

She let him lead her through the door without a fight, her wet hair dangling in long strands. He leads her inside and only lets her go to close the door behind him, the loud sounds of the harsh storm outside subsiding just as another low growl of thunder rumbles. "You okay?" He asks her on a soft chuckle.

Kate can't help but feel a halfhearted smile tug at her lips, the warmth of his home making her clothes feel cold, clingy, and uncomfortable against her skin, suddenly feeling frozen and rigid, standing in his new lakehouse for the first time. "I'm fine, Castle." She reassures him on a stiff nod from an even stiffer neck, feeling him put a hand on the center of her back as he moves around her.

"You sure?" He asks again, moving around her to stand directly in front of her. "I warned you about those steps, Beckett. Are you sure you aren't hurt?"

She feels another warm smile pull at her lips as she senses his presence near her. She flicks the thick strands of her wet hair out of her face and looks up to him with a smile. "I'm okay."

But when she meets his eyes, something inside of him makes it feel as if the world just stopped.

Standing in front of him, at his door, her hair and her clothes soaking wet, her eyes lit up with happiness, her lips turned up in the smallest hint of a smile that somehow makes it look as if she couldn't be happier...

Rick's throat squeezes shut right after his skin seems to tighten with nerves, looking into her eyes.

_I almost died, _her words, even the inflection she used rings clearly as day in his ears as if she's saying them to him right now, _and all I could think about was you. _

His heart races wildly over his straining lungs, his entire body clamming up the more he looks at her.

Kate can sense him. It's in the way he's looking at her, with those wide, shocked eyes. Like something is going through his mind that he can't stop. Her body shivers with the cold, her breath shuddering violently at the same time her conscience converges with her heart to remind her of that night, soaked to the bone, standing at his door after coming just a fingertip away from losing her life and only thinking about him... only thinking that there's only one that mattered to her at the end of her life and that's what she wanted to focus on... him.

In perfect harmony, they both come back in that instant, looking away from each other and shutting off their raw emotions as Rick takes a step away from her. "I-I'll uh..." he struggles, wiping his hand off on the thigh of his slacks as he shuffles away from her, "I'll go get you a towel?" He says in a questioning tone, pointing behind him.

All Kate can do is smile and nod nervously and stand rigid in his foyer, her heart acting like a wild butterfly inside of her.

"Right," Rick says and turns around to head through the living room and toward his home gym and the downstairs bathroom, "you just got over being sick, we don't need to go there again." He remarks, trying to lighten the tense air in the house.

"Yeah," Kate chuckles as she watches him dart through the living room and round the corner in front of the dining area with the French doors leading outside, catching sight of him a few seconds through the kitchen as he goes to the back of the house.

But as Rick makes it to the hall closet and puts his hand on a dark blue town sitting on a shelf, his breath gets heavy and he stops.

_He got away... and I didn't care,_ her words echo in his heart again. Rick's eyes drift shut as his breath comes in hard, heavy pants. _I almost died... and all I could think about was you. _

He's never mattered that much to someone before. He's never been the be all and end all before. He's never been someone's endgame. Never once in his life has he been the one that felt like he mattered that much to anyone. She was the very first one to feel that way for him. She was the one that proved to herself, through some crucible she went through on her own, that at the end of it all, just him and who he was was enough to her. Rick feels his heart ache painfully as his hand wrenches the towel on the shelf in front of him.

_I just want you. _

Kate's heartbeat gets heavier and heavier the longer she stands in his home, the natural warmth and love his home exudes starting to pull her in. Her eyes drift shut, her body feeling weak and off-balance as her mind starts to wander, the memory of his hands and his body on her for the very first time going on a full assault of her conscience. In her entire life, she'd never felt that connected to someone, like what she was doing not only felt that natural but felt that deep and meaningful. It wasn't a physical act for them that night. It was almost spiritual.

God, she can still feel his lips and his hands on her.

Her eyes pop open at the sound of a floorboard creaking. Her entire body locks up when she sees him storming up to her with darkened eyes. Her breath hitches as his hand grabs her face, his fingers digging into the back of her neck. He pushes her back to the door with such ease, it's almost like she's floating. She locks up completely when his lips find her's in a long, hard, passionate kiss that vices her between him and the thick textured window on the door, his warm hand cupping her face. The force of his incredible kiss makes her legs buckle and her heart feels like it just exploded into pieces.

He catches her with his other hand on her hip, pressing her body back against the door as he takes a step into her, moving his lips against her and capturing her in a kiss that seems to shotgun her with a level of passion she could only ever get from him.

"Mmm..." she moans shakingly, her body weak and limp her he kisses her.

It's when he moves to deepen the slow, intense kiss even further that her mind is given a spark and she finds herself again. She reaches up and puts her hands on his chest, using all of her strength to ball her fists up in his dark burgundy shirt and push him back. She can't have this if it's another one time thing. She can't live with it if it is.

As she pushes him off, Rick leans forward to try and keep the kiss, his lips slowly peeling off her and his shakey breath hitting her ears. Kate's eyes pop open just as his thumb is brushing a smooth line across her cheekbone and she sees his eyes closed and his brow arched emotionally. Her heart stops when she sees his face and feels his hand still on her, now moving down to the side of her neck with his thumb brushing over her jawline.

When he opens his eyes and she sees they've almost reddened and he's looking directly at her, exuding honest want and need, not anger or hostility or impatience, but openness... in that moment, she knows.

And in that moment, she lets out an emotional, breathy chuckle as a smile splits across her face and her heart swells larger than it ever has before. She puts her hands on his face and leaps forward, taking his lips back in a firey kiss that's lit with raw emotion and more longing than she's ever felt for anyone in her life.

"Mmm!" She moans loudly as he puts an arm around her back and pushes her back against his front door again, pinning her helplessly. He melds his lips against her in that perfect way, just as he did that night, his hands going up and down her body wantingly while she pulls, grasps, and pushes at his back, putting her fingers in his hair and taking every kiss, tasting his tongue as much as she can with every long, passionate motion his lips make.

She makes the first move by grabbing the sides of her jacket and whipping it off her shoulders, giving him both permission and the signal that it's real. He follows her and moves his hands to her legs, grabbing her by the back of the thighs and taking her full weight on his hips, moving her legs around his waist at the same time her jacket falls to the floor with a wet plop. His fingers greedily dig into her thighs while he breaks away from her lips to drag his mouth down her jaw and onto her neck.

"Aww!" Kate moans loudly over another roll of thunder outside, one of her hands moving over his shoulder and around his neck with the other traveling up his neck and disheveling his hair, pushing his mouth against her neck. His hot breath fanning down her wet, clinging shirt and across her neck makes her entire body crawl and tingle with excitement, his lips pressing and massaging her flesh perfectly. "Oh, Castle..." She moans into his ear, her head falling back against the door.

He kisses her pulse point and down over her jugular, eventually moving a hand off her thigh while the other moves to her ass as he reaches up to pull the neck of her shirt from the store down, kissing her chest as low as he can. Kate leans forward and presses her lips to his hair, moving both her hands up and sliding her fingers through it. Her legs vice his waist with as much strength as she can muster, her body letting out a violent shiver of ecstasy.

Rick lets out a hard breath that fans down her wet shirt. Kate takes that as a sign to put her hands on the sides of his head, leaning him back until he's looking up at her. She pauses for a moment, still seeing that same openness and want in his sharp blue eyes as she did before. When she sees it, her heart swells again and leans down, capturing his lips in a hard, passionate kiss.

"Bedroom?" She pants against his lips as she fumbles to find the buttons of his shirt.

"Mmm," he moans into her kiss, his hands greedily digging into the taught fabric of her jeans over her ass, "all the way upstairs."

"Mmm," she moans after him, kissing him again as passionately as she can. After another slow motion against his incredible mouth, she pops her eyes open and looks passed him and to the left. "Couch is right there." She slurs while kissing him.

"Good..." he tries, returning her kiss, "good call," he moans, her hands moving across his jaw and up into his hair again. "Just hold on."

"What?" She asks in a tight voice as her smile spreads brightly across her face. His hands pull her against him and her legs grip his waist as tight as she can as he steps back away from the door, carrying her with him with one hand on her ass and the other bracing her back. "Wow." She smiles against his lips.

"I've been working out." He brags as he reaches for her lips again, pressing their foreheads together as he carries her backward toward the couch.

"Mmm..." she moans again and kisses him, reaching down to start to unbutton his shirt.

She's halfway down his shirt when he falls back into the center of his couch. She finds his mouth again and kisses him back against the cushion, finishing unbuttoning his shirt and whipping it open at the sides. She doesn't waste any time in pressing her palms flat against his naked chest, massaging his hard, toned muscles greedily and wantingly.

"Mmm..." she moans deeply, her palms feeling the clear outline of his abs just as she feels his hands slide up under the sides of her shirt. "I'm not as patient as I was that night, Rick." She says into his mouth.

Suddenly, he leans up and whips her shirt off and over her head, laying his hand flat on her back over the strap of her bra in the same motion that she uses to press his shirt off his shoulders and pull it out from behind him. He captures her mouth in a hot, frenzied kiss as he wraps his bare arms around her, his bicep bulging against her ribs on her side while her bra comes undone, falling off her shoulders between them.

She sucks at his bottom lip hotly, reaching up and yanking her bra and tossing it to the other end of the couch. She presses him back against the couch with her bare chest against his, making her entire body crawl with want and excitement at their warm skin coming in contact again, and leans her forehead against his and moving her arms around his shoulders while he moves his hands up the dip of her spine.

She kisses him slowly again for a long few seconds before pressing her hands against his chest and leaning up, her eyes never leaving his. She pets his chest for a moment before she speaks, "I love you, Rick."

His eyes dance around her features for a moment, looking up at her haunting beauty just as he did that night, with her hair still wet and stringy. His heart feels so full right now. "I believe you."

A smile overtakes her and she reaches up, taking his jaw in her hands and kissing him in as passionate a kiss as she's ever given him. She reaches down and pushes her shoes off her feet before moving around and finding the button of his pants, their lips never parting. "I love you," she says again into his mouth as she undoes his pants. He presses his hips up against her, making her breath hitch as she moves to kiss him again. He pushes his pants off in that motion, ending with him laying back in the couch with her only in a pair of wet denim jeans, straddling him.

She moves to kiss him again just as his arm goes around her side and urges her to lay across the length of the couch. He steadies himself over her, his mouth never moving away from her's. Once she's on her back, she presses her palms to his hard muscles again and feels him undo the button on her jeans, prying the wet, clinging denim off her long, perfectly toned legs with one hand. As he leans up to pull the pants off her legs, she spreads her legs in front of him as he leans back down on top of her.

Her breath stops as he grasps her hip with one hand, feeling the tip of his hard cock tickle her wanting folds. Her brow arches emotionally as her heart starts to pound. "Nothing's changed from that night, Rick." She says in an emotional voice, petting his chest. "I just want you."

He pants as his eyes drift shut and he leans down, pressing his forehead down onto her's, easing himself inside of her quivering folds as deep as he can.

"Ahh!" She moans loudly as he dives inside of her. "Just you, Rick." She breathes, moving her arms around him.

He moves out of her, diving back in with a smooth, hard thrust, his forehead leaning down against her's in a loving reverence as he takes her. Feeling him thrust into her with long, smooth, gentle strokes, she can feel her eyes burn as he moves to press his full, solid weight down against her along the length of the couch.

"Faster," she pleads, moving a hand into his hair and putting his mouth in the crook of her neck. "Please... faster!" She begs him, feeling his hard length dive into her with agonizingly slow thrusts. "Oh, Castle!" She vocalizes her need of him loudly into his ear as his hand finds her ass and tugs her hips against him in a hard thrust, pounding into her. "_Oh!" _She gasps emotionally, her legs wrapping around him, her ankles hooking together at the small of his back.

Rick pounds into her in a whirlwind of movements, gaining in speed and want with every hard thrust that she eggs out of him. "Oh, Kate," he groans as his fingers dig into the flesh of her ass, pulling her hips against him as he starts to grind against her.

A watery smile spreads across her face, putting a hand in his hair again as she looks up to the ceiling with hot tears stinging her eyes. "Rick," she parrots his name back to him, feeling connected to him again... truly connected to him. "Don't stop... please, don't stop, Rick." She begs him, taking a fistful of his hair, pressing her lips to his jaw.

He reaches his lips out to feather a kiss below her ear as he moves in and out of her. There's only one other time in his life he's felt this connected to someone, on such a base level. And it was with her... the night after she told him she loved him for the first time, at the peak of their relationship. As this thought quickly consumes his heart, his body can't help but kick into overdrive, pounding into her as deep as he can, burying himself in her folds.

"Ah!" She cries, her nails digging into his tightly muscled back. "Rick," She strains, her entire body coiling under him as he continues to thrust into her, "I'm coming."

"Ugh-" he groans in a strained voice into her ear. "Kate."

"Kiss me," she demands. "Kiss me, Rick."

His lips smash against her's in a hard, passionate kiss, pouring every ounce of raw emotion they can into each other as her body tightens and coils underneath him. "Mmm!" She moans against his lips, tears falling out of her eyes, feeling his motions get harder and harder. She moves her arms around his neck and pins him down on top of her, kissing him as hard as she can right as she explodes around him, her entire body rocking and vibrating wildly. "_Mmm!" _She moans loudly, her lips smashed against his, feeling him press her hips down into the cushion of the couch, spilling and pulsating inside of her.

Their bodies stiffen over one another, her limbs clinging to him tightly and her lips sealed against his as they ride out their joint orgasm with each other. On a shaky breath, their bodies start to come down and they release the kiss, starting to relax against each other. With a soft pluck, she lets his lips go as he starts to relax down on top of her, his full weight laying on top of her.

Both panting, a thick layer of sweat permeating their skin and the air, his head lobs off to the side and her arms fall limply down across his back, her leg falling off the couch and hanging over the edge of the couch.

But once she comes down from the incredible orgasm, there's a moment when fear and dread starts to set in. Her heart jumps up into her throat and tears begin to sting her eyes, thinking that they might have just let things get out of hand again, that what just happened was just... scratching an itch.

But when he turns his head into her neck and begins to feather light, lazy kisses against her skin, his hand lazily traveling up her leg, the tears of fear quickly turn to hot tears of joy as a smile spreads across her face.

Kate closes her eyes and wraps her arms around the man she loves, feeling him brush kiss after kiss across her neck, and hugs him. She starts to laugh, her happiness bubbling up inside of her. It soon turns into choked sobs, her body jumping underneath him as she hugs him, clings to him.

After all she went through, all the pain she went through, all the failures she dealt with and mistakes she's admitted to and tried her hardest to make up for, she finally has him back.

As she holds her arms around his neck, pressing her face into the side of his neck, tears falling out of her eyes, she decides to remember this moment. The moment when she got the love of her life back.

* * *

_A/N: Sorry about the delay. It's been weird lately. I said that it would be a minimum of two scenes if I upped the rating, and I delivered. Hope the set up was worth it. Let me know. I'll try to have another chapter up sometime this weekend of things work out. Thanks again for the ups and support. You guys rock. /=]_


	33. Chapter 33

The storm has died down, but it's still pouring. Rick can hear it still pounding against the house from the laundry room that's just off the kitchen from the hallway that leads to the stairs.

In just a pair of pants, he stands in front of the washer and dryer, her clothes in a wet, soaking pile on top of the dryer. It's only been about ten minutes at the most since they decided to separate, lethargically trailing their hands off each other, lazily coming back to the world. After he had pressed up off her, ghosting her hands up his back and down his chest in a way that makes it so he can still feel her touch now, he'd sat back in the other end of the couch and she sat up after him into his side, rubbing his chest with that lazy, sexy smile and kissing his neck.

After a few moments of that, she stood up, still stark naked, and stretched her arms up to the ceiling before leaning back to stretch her back. He could have taken her back right then and there at how perfect her body looked. And she knew it by that smokey look she gave him over her shoulder, her wet hair still falling over her eyes as she reached over to grab his dark burgundy shirt that laid draped over the corner of the coffee table, slipping it over her arms as she went into the kitchen.

He gathered up her clothes from the floor after putting his jeans back on and is now getting ready to put them in the dryer for her.

On a hard breath, his heart feeling a strange mixture of full of love, yet cautious, like a balloon that's overinflated almost, he pulls her shirt out from under the wet pile of denim that is her jeans and lays it out on his hands. He looks over his shoulder and out into the hallway, listening for her in the kitchen and hearing some movement of the cupboards.

She spilled coffee on her clothes when she fell. He dries her clothes like this, she'll smell like it all day, probably bake the smell into her clothes. He shakes his head for a moment and decides to toss all her clothes in the washer, pour in some detergent, and starts it through a quick cycle. She might be a little irritated that her clothes have to go through an extra cycle. But...

His throat closes in that moment. He believes that she loves him. He knows that.

But can she stay that way?

His heart gets tighter as the thought seems to snake its way into his body, poisoning every ounce of romance, passion, closeness, and love that he felt so confident in as he gathered up her clothes. He physically grits his teeth and forces the thought away as he presses the start button on the far right end of the panel on the washing machine before glancing outside through the window to his right. It's still pouring rain, the limbs of the evergreen trees are wafting up and down, and he can see that Cecelia and Greg are home for the day judging by the light on in their front room across the street.

Another soft rumble of thunder echos from the distance where the storm has moved on to and Rick brushes a hand down his bare stomach for a moment before turning out of the laundry room. But he stops at the doorway when he looks up from the hardwood floor and into the kitchen where he can see her standing at the island, her back facing him. His eyes rove over her hungrily, her long, perfectly toned, naked legs coming out of a wrinkled dark burgundy dress shirt that has the sleeves folded up her forearms.

She makes it so easy for him to go crazy. It's like she knows just what to do. With a towel in one hand, padding her wet, very sexily stringed hair that's still drying from the rain, one leg bent and side hem of his shirt showing off just enough of her perfect hip bones to make his mind go blank, it's like she's giving him a gift that he's never allowed to open. Just torturing him with her body and her mannerisms.

He breathes a hard, unsteady sigh as he takes a long moment to watch her.

He has to get over this. He's never going to be happy with anyone if he doesn't.

After another few seconds, he moves his eyes down to the floor again, not sure how to approach them anymore, where they stand, until he sees her grab for her phone from under the towel that sits in a pile in front of her on the counter. He watches silently as she puts it to her ear. "Hi, Dad."

Rick's heart ices over as he listens to her. Everything inside of him falls in that moment, the tiny glimmer of hope now just seeming to wave at him tauntingly from the other side of a canyon like a Road Runner cartoon. He understood before they broke up. She had a job to do, her career was the most important thing and in some twisted, self-deprecating way, he understood that and was willing to tag along for the ride as long as he was part of the ride with her. That job interview made him see that she never had any intention of bringing him along with her in her life at all. It was easy to stay his usual optimistic, hopeful self before that.

"No, I'm fine." She continues softly, just above a whisper. "No, nothing like that. It's just that uh..."

Rick cranes his head forward, the same hopeless feeling burying him.

"Dad, it's Castle." He hears her say, almost making him sick. "It's finally happening." She says as he's reaching out to brace his weight on the door jam. "So I... I can't leave, not now." His breath stops, his heart squeezing cautiously, tightening his skin. "Yeah, I'm sure." She continues quietly. "Dad," she chuckles softly, "it's what I'm out here for."

Rick watches from the doorway of the laundry room, amazed to the point of almost not believing it. When he finally lets go of the breath he's holding, he finds himself smiling.

"Thanks, Dad." She says after another pause. "Yeah, I'll call you later."

She flicks her hair around her shoulder as she moves her phone off her ear, pressing her thumb to the screen before setting it down to the counter again and picking up the towel to put it over the ends of her damp hair. Watching her for a second, he feels that slow-working poison lose its grip on his system. She really does want this, doesn't she? She really does love him.

With a quivering heart, Rick quietly pads his way out of the laundry room, down the hall a few paces until his bare feet hit the cold tile of the kitchen. Her back still facing him, he slows as he sneaks up behind her, putting his hand low on her hip, ducking underneath the hem of his shirt and easing her body forward into the edge of the counter before slowly pressing his body up against her.

Kate's heart flutters wildly at the sudden yet all too slow feeling of his sensuous hand on her skin before feeling his firm body and his hips press against her ass, leaning her into the edge of the counter in front of her. "Ha..." she sighs eagerly, leaning forward a bit as she reaches behind her, searching for him.

She can sense him reach up with his other hand before he hooks her hair around his finger and pulls it away like a curtain, revealing her neck. Her breath hitches in a gasp when his hand on her hip snakes around her waist and engulfs her while he leans in and presses his lips to that spot a few inches below her ear that's like the x on a treasure map that he already has memorized and sucks on it for just a second before letting the small patch of skin go with a soft pluck, leaving his lips brushing against her neck.

Her hand finally finds his hair and she weaves her fingers through it, taking a fistful of it to pull his mouth back on her as her head lobs off to the side. His arms circle around her fully, hugging her body to his solid chest while he gives her neck another long, romantic kiss. He lets her go with another pluck and trails his lips up her skin to her ear. "Your clothes are in the washer." He whispers to her in a deep, gruff voice.

Feeling dizzy, she weaves her fingers through his hair before moving her hand to his jaw. "Did they need washed?"

"Well," he says lightly before teasing her with another kiss, "you spilled coffee all over the place."

"Ha..." she sighs another soft chuckle as his lips capture another patch of her skin, his arms moving out from around her while his hands grab her hips, pulling her against him but pushing her against the counter at the same time. "You have no idea how much I've missed this." She sighs, her voice weak and heavy, her head lobbing off to the side.

He stops, the motions of his lips coming to a screeching halt. He pulls away from her and she can feel a distance fall between them at what she just said. She reaches down and puts a hand over his, taking it with her as she pulls it to go around her midsection, looking over her shoulder, catching his eyes and blank expression. "You left me, remember?" He challenges her.

Her eyes sting, her heart cratering at what just happened as she spins around in his arms to face him, putting her hands down on his chest and fanning her fingers out, looking up to his eyes. "I didn't mean it like that. You know that."

Rick breathes out a cold breath, his eyes falling down between them. He could grieve and whine about those weeks, hell, months, after she left for DC. How he felt his entire life wasn't just over, but not even worth living. How he forced himself to get up again and get better. But what good would that do now? He just offers up a stiff nod and gives her hips another soft squeeze as he moves in blindly to kiss her. Kate complies and cranes her neck back to accept his lips, kissing him fully but quickly. She retreats slightly after it breaks, but silently gestures that it's not because she wants him to leave by snaking her arms around his chest.

Rick lets go of her hips to brace himself against the counter, leaning back to look at her and sees her looking up at him with those big, brown eyes. "You told me yesterday that you missed what we had together." His eyes get heavy as he looks away from her. She lets her hands rove jealously over the firm muscles on his back before entwining her fingers together at the small of his back.

He breathes a shaky breath, trying to harden it as it leaves to no avail. "I do." He says, trying to hide the painful furrow in his brow that gives away his true emotions.

Kate smiles softly, not letting the feeling of their closeness get lost in the weeds of their conversation. "Rick, I missed us too." She tells him confidently. But by the sound of the hard breath coming out of his nostrils and the look that clouds his eyes when he looks away, she knows he doesn't buy it off hand. "You don't believe me." She states plainly, her arms falling limply around his waist but still hugging him.

"You said yourself that you were fired, Beckett." He says in a dark voice, but looking back up to her with a vulnerability glimmering in his eyes. She feels her throat close when their eyes meet. "If you never did whatever it is you did to get fired, you wouldn't even be here right now."

"That _doesn't _mean that I didn't miss you, Castle." She softly urges him, pulling on his body again, looking up to him with emotionally honest eyes. After a small pause, her mind thinks back and a smile sneaks passed the tense situation that she tries to shake away.

Rick's brow creases when he notices. "What?"

Kate just smiles wider. "You said I never thought about you, but I was just thinking about when my partner was driving me home after I got fired."

His throat constricts tightly as she mentions a partner. "A..." he tries, not wanting to sound that insecure about the fact that being partners was _their _thing and how _they _fell in love, "a partner?"

She looks up to him a bit nonchalantly and shrugs. "Yeah, she was kind of a hard nose. You know, by the book, dedicated, good at her job." She explains quickly.

_She, _is all he can think of. That's where his mind stopped. "So, what happened?"

Kate fights a smile and rolls her eyes in classic fashion. "She had hired a moving crew to help move my stuff and they were just getting started on my bedroom when we got there." She tells him, the fact that they're still pressed against each other in only one article of clothing each slipping her mind for now as it seemed so normal for them before. "I um..." she trails off, feeling a blush heat the sides of her neck, "I might have flipped out a bit on one of the movers when they got to my dresser and tried to take out your drawer."

His heart flutters cautiously inside of his chest. "Really?" He asks with a slight, surprised smirk.

"I almost dislocated the guy's arm." She says matter-of-factly, looking up to him with a purse in her lips.

His brow shoots up. "Over my drawer?"

Her eyes soften and her smile graces her features again, feeling her hands splay out against his back again. "It was all I had left of you."

He doesn't know how to respond. He's never had to deal with anyone feeling that way before. No one ever has. "At least you had something." He says in a heavy voice, looking away to avoid eye contact.

But she catches it. "Rick, I'm tired of us hurting each other." She says, pulling at his waist to regain his eyes. "I want to move forward but I won't do it without you. So," she stops, straightening up her posture but not moving her arms out from around him, "let's talk about it, okay?"

"Hmm..." he attempts, only succeeding in a low groan, "okay." He agrees after a few seconds of silence and shrugs his shoulders in a stiff motion. "What do you want from this?"

Kate feels a smile tickle the corners of her lips, almost excited to answer the question for him. She reaches one hand between the open folds of his shirt and pulls out her necklace, taking hold of the engagement ring and holding it up for him, watching as he notices what she's holding and seeing his expression deepen. "I want you to put this ring on my finger." She says confidently. "And I want us to get married... something small and intimate, that's just about us. I want us to... talk about starting a family." That catches his full, rapt attention. "And I want us to be together and be in love and be married." She rambles before looking back down to the ring with a watery smile shining across her face.

Rick breathes softly as he leans against her a little more, looking down to the ring with her. After a moment, he reaches up and takes it from her. "So, you never put it on?" He asks, testing the waters.

She just smiles and shakes her head. "Nope." She says, letting her hands fall down to his abs. "I mean, I wanted to. I was about to a couple times. But I no, I never put it on. It didn't seem right."

"So you," he tries again, insecurity and frailty coming into his voice as he looks back and forth from the ring to her, "you never even _tried _it on... just to..."

Kate lets out a breath and wraps her arms around his waist again. "What are you trying to say?"

"Nothing," he says with a feigned lift in his brow, waving the ring about, "it's just uh... wanted to see if it fit is all."

That makes everything inside of her stop to a dead halt. She reaches back around and takes the ring from him quickly. "You had it sized?" She asks, taking another closer look at the ring.

"Well, when I saw myself proposing to you in my head and you saying yes, I didn't exactly see the ring not being able to fit on your finger." He explains, trying his best to make it sound light hearted and humorous.

A bright, open smile quickly overtakes her features, making her features light up with happiness. She pinches her lips together and wraps her arms back around him, pulling him as close to her as she can. "Castle, if we're going to do this again, we both owe it to ourselves to do it right."

All he can do is let his neck crane and give her a small nod. "You're right."

"So," she starts for both of them, "I've told you what I want. What do you want, Rick?" She asks him, trying to sound as sincere as possible.

He feels a part of him ice over, having to talk about it. A part of it makes him feel selfish, demanding of her. "What I want... is..." he starts in a shaky, uneasy voice until he finally looks over to meet her eyes, "not to come last."

The tension that snaked around her a few moments ago falls away as she hears his answer, a smile coming back to her face. "You're all I want, Rick." She says softly, reaching up to run her fingers down his cheek and over his stubble. "There's nothing else _but _you."

"And I don't want you to look back and see that as a bad thing." He says right after her, looking up to her and making all of her happiness and confidence fade by the sorrow glimmering in his eyes. "I don't want you to choose me _now _and then ten or fifteen years down the line be telling our kids what you could have been if not for me." He explains with more emotional honesty in his voice than intended. "I don't want to resent having put that ring on your finger because you _could _have had someone like Vaughn or... or you _could _have taken that job at a powerful law firm but can't because you're stuck with me."

But Kate's worry stops when he mentions the job. She hasn't thought about Claire's job offer in weeks, just because it doesn't mean that much to her. "You know about that?"

Rick's jaw clicks. "Your dad told me about it."

Kate flattens her hands against his back and pulls him into her again. Maybe this is what Sierra was talking about. She can see the hurt in his eyes that he normally hides so well under that clever disguise of that ruggedly handsome smirk and those baby blue eyes and square jaw. She can feel it when their eyes meet. "Rick," she starts softly and moves her arms out from around him, grabbing both his wrists that he's using to brace himself against the counter behind her and moves his hands to her scars. She places his right hand firmly over the scar in the center of her chest, through the opening of his shirt, and his left, she slides up the bottom to the long, jagged line of her surgical scar.

His breath catches when he feels them, but he doesn't dare move.

"You know what these are, Rick." She tells him as she holds his hands against her body for a long few moments. When she's sure he'll keep them there, she moves her hands to his chest. "You were there when I got them... and I wouldn't be the same person I am now if you weren't there for me." She slowly moves her hands up his body until she's framing his jaw with a gentle touch. "But I made the mistake of assuming that just because mine were fresh, that you didn't have any of your own... and that they still didn't hurt."

His breath shakes at it leaves his throat, his finger circling the scar on her chest and his thumb petting the line of the scar on her side.

"You helped me heal mine because you loved me." She tells him, petting his jaw. "I want to do the same for you, Rick... for the same reason."

Rick pets her scars again with weak-feeling hands, his eyes locked onto the soft outline on her skin of where the bullet hit her. When she gently pushes on his jaw, he looks up to her, only seeing openness... a willingness to hear him out and help.

"Do you still believe that I love you?" She asks, wanting a real answer because she's honestly afraid he lost faith in it already.

Rick can only swallow thickly, his eyes shimmering, and answer her by moving his hands out of the openings of his shirt and wrap his arms around her, hugging her in a tight embrace.

She doesn't waste any time in flinging her arms around his neck and holding his body against her. Because a part of her wants to know what it's like. When she got her scars, she looks back now and wishes she could have just admitted to herself that she didn't just need him, but wanted him to help her, comfort her... hold her. And now, putting her arms around him, she takes it as a sign that he's at least admitting that he needs something more from her. And as she turns her face into his neck, tightening her arms around his neck, she feels closer to him.

She breathes out a long sigh and reaches up, putting her fingers in his hair. "I'm not going anywhere, Rick."

His hand runs a patch up her back as he holds her, staying silent.

"I'll be right here." She reassures him, running her nails in a soft pattern against his scalp, her heart swelling to bursting as the next word forms in her mind. "Always."


	34. Chapter 34

Kate jabs her hips back in one forceful motion. "_Uh!" _

"Mmm!" He groans underneath her, the pads of his fingers digging into her toned thighs straddling his waist.

Her palms pressing into his almost washboard abs, only seeing them with her hands as her head lobs back in ecstasy, she rocks herself forward, his hard erection filling her. Her heart is pounding against the walls of her chest, riding him just like she used to. She keeps moving her hips in a circle against him, pressing and digging down onto him with every motion in a slow, agonizing pace while she feels his hands squeeze her thighs then move up to cup the curve of her ass, pulling her hips forward.

"Ooo..." Rick coos sexily, lifting his head up from the pillow to look at where their bodies meet. Her head tilted back and lost in the sex with her eyes closed, he can see her folds glisten around him.

Kate's hands wrap around his sides, sliding up the muscles on his ribcage until she leans forward and braces herself against his pecs, tossing her head forward to have her hair fall in front of her face, making her expression look dark and focused. She lets out a hard pant as she lifts her hips off him, almost slipping off his cock.

Rick's lungs drain of air and his stomach tightens at the loss, anticipation making his blood bubble. His hands squeeze her ass in a soft grip before his eyes flick back up to meet hers. The instant their eyes meet, Kate presses a hand to the center of his chest, keeping him down against the bed while her lips grimace in frustration right before she slams her hips back down onto him as hard as she can.

"_Uhh!" _She grunts as her head lists off to the side. They bounce in bed from the motion and they can both hear Sasha's tags jangle softly from the other side of the room. Kate doesn't let him rest for more than a few seconds before she lifts her hips off him again bounces back onto him in a hard rhythm, riding him and making them bounce up and down in bed. Her voice is coming in hard, sexy grunts every time she humps him.

His hands seem to be guiding her, pulling up on her ass and pushing it down in every motion. She can feel his chest tighten under her hands as she braces her weight against him. He glides his hands around her body, sliding over her sweat slickened skin until his fingers outline her ribcage.

"Oh!" She animalistically begs, lifting her head to flick her hair back behind her. She continues to ride him in the same hard rhythm, slamming her hips down onto him. She digs her nails into the toned flesh of his chest before grabbing his wrists and moving his hands to cup her breasts, clamping down on his fingers to make sure he squeezes. "Oh... Castle!" She cries loudly.

"Huh..." Rick groans as he cups her breasts in a strong but gentle grip, feeling her nails dig into his knuckles.

"That's it..." Kate moans as she braces herself against his abs again, thrusting herself back against him as she arches her back and curves her ass into him. "Oh my god."

His hands envelop her breasts as she leans into his grip as best she can while she rides him. The heat and musk in the room is making the air thick to breathe, his heart racing as all he can focus on his her soaked folds squeezing him, feeling her ride him relentlessly.

"I'm..." Kate pants as the sweat from her brow runs onto the bridge of her nose, "no, I'm not supposed to come first."

Right then, Rick pinches his thumbs and forefingers against her nipples, making her entire body buck into him in one, single forceful motion against his cock. "Scores all tied him." He brags as he mewls his hips up into her for one motion.

"This was..." Kate tries, her mind consumed with just thoughts of how incredible he feels, "was supposed to be..." she keeps trying, her arms getting weak as her muscles catch on fire, "supposed to be me..." she says and falls down against him, their sweaty bodies melding against each other and Kate turning her head so his lips are at her ear, "worshipping you for a change."

His breath fans into her ear, making her body quiver as her hips take over, continuing to slide and mewl against him. His lips press against that special spot below her ear that his lips were made for and her body twists when he thrusts up into her at the exact same time.

"_Oh!" _Kate cries, her legs squeezing his hips, her hands squeezing his biceps, and her folds squeezing his cock. She leans up and presses back down onto him, tossing her hair back and feels his hands slide onto the front of her legs again. When her hips start to ride him, bouncing up and down, her body is moving on its own. She's controlled now by the sheer want of wanting sexual release as her eyes close and her motions get faster and more rigid.

As the bed squeaks to match their bodies slapping together, her breath stops as her lungs refuse to let go of air. Feeling his hard erection thrust into her folds, her center is coiling tighter and tighter as the room spins. Her nails dig into his abs. The pads of his fingers dig into her thighs, his hands squeezing her flesh.

She sucks in one last breath as her body explodes around him. "_Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho!" _She moans on a hard shake, her body trembling in one of the hardest orgasms she's ever experienced. She sinks down onto him, her back arching forward and her grip on reality slipping. She sucks in a long breath, filling her lungs with as much air as they can hold in one hard pant, "Ho... my god..." she breathes.

Rick, still hard, feels her come down onto him, waiting for her to come back to him. A smile picks at the side of his mouth. "That felt incredible."

Kate pants hard, her body shivering with ecstasy. Her weak fingers press into the lines of his muscles. She hesitates to even move anymore, knowing that even the slightest flick will cause her entire body to crawl with the intense aftershocks of sex. When she starts to move her body, even moving her hips to lift off of him causes her body to quake forcefully.

"_Nnn!" _She sounds through grinding teeth. In one long motion, she slides up off him, her breath shaking as he slips out of her. "You aren't finished." She points out when she feels him, thinking that he just released the same time she did and the feeling got lost. "How are you not finished?" She asks, unable to even open her eyes.

Rick lets out a low growl, wanting her back, and starts to lean up to capture her lips.

But Kate stops him with a hand on the center of his chest. "No," she says and slowly eases him back down. Rick complies, his mind stopping when she finally cracks her eyes open and meets his gaze. She smiles slyly. "I told you, babe." She tells him with a sexy wag of her brow. "It's my turn," she starts, reaching down and grabbing him with a firm grip, making him buck, "to worship you."

"Mmm, Kate," he grits as she slides her body down the bed, leans down, and takes him into her mouth. His entire body crawls at the feeling of her tongue pressing against him and her lips sucking on him. His head nods back, pressing so hard that it falls into the gap in the pillows, feeling her take him into her mouth at full hilt.

"Mmm," she moans against him as she grips him, stroking him as her mouth descends. She sucks him for a few more motions before she trails one hand up his chest greedily, moving the other to gripping his leg to cup him with a grip grasp. He bucks up into her again and she feels proud, fighting a smile as she slides her mouth down onto him again.

Rick balls up his fists into the sheets, gritting his teeth.

Kate moans deeply again as she takes him full hilt and moves her hands to slide between him and the mattress. Feeling a giggle at the back of her throat, she digs her fingers into his tight ass and feels him buck up into her mouth. She laughs, satisfied, and sucks him harder. After pressing her tongue against him again, she moves her hands to wrap her arms around his hips.

"Mmm..." Rick groans as he snaps at the sheets. When he feels her arms hug his hips and feels her mouth on him unforgivingly, he snaps at the sheets again before putting his hands on her head and guiding her. She sucks on him wantingly, tightening both her mouth and her arms around him. "Oh, god, Kate," his eyes roll back.

"Mmm," she moans back as the motions of her head gain speed.

He tries to speak to warn her, but when her arms refuse to come out from around his hips, he feels himself explode into her mouth. His spine flexes to make his shoulders arch off the bed, his entire body coiling in the orgasm. But she just keeps her mouth on him, her hands pressing him into her against his back arching off the bed.

After a few incredible seconds, he falls down to the bed, a lifeless husk.

"Huh..." he pants, practically seeing stars. As the sweat permeates his body, he lifts a heavy hand off the bed and presses it against his forehead, feeling her crawl her way back up to him.

"Hmmhmm," she giggles, sliding her hand up his abs while she moves up his side. When she's laying next to him in his right side, as she always is after they make love, she pets his heaving chest and looks down at him. "I love worshipping you," she says in a breathless voice, watching as his hazy eyes stare up at the ceiling. "I see why you do it to me so much."

A smile shines across his face, his chest jumping as he laughs with her silently. She smiles with him, feeling happier than she ever remembers being without him. She wants to kiss him, is staring at his smile wanting to kiss it off him. She loves him so much. But she remembers their rule.

And after a moment after Rick's arm falls back down to the bed and naturally lands to cradle her into his side, Kate reaches over him, practically having to climb on top of him to reach for the drawer of the nightstand.

And right as her hand is pulling open the drawer and is searching inside, Rick asks. "What are you looking for?"

"Your breath mints." She says in a slightly strained voice as she stretches herself over him, blindingly searching for the breath mints he always kept stashed for just this occasion. She stops on a pant and turns to look down to him, their noses almost touching. "Your rule about kissing after third base? Remember?" She reminds him.

He smiles widely. "Oh yeah." He remembers, now just wanting to kiss her. "After that time in the supply closet on our way to the morgue."

She smiles slightly, "Yeah, remember you complained about me kissing you after we finish on third base?"

"That was your fault. You just couldn't wait a few more hours until you got off your shift, could you?" He retorts.

"_My _fau-" she says back, stopping to adjust herself until she's leaning on top of him, "you were wearing that black shirt with those blue pinstripes that you _knew _I loved because of how it brought out your eyes _and _you ate all my spearmint gum out of my desk."

"Ryan bet me five dollars I couldn't blow a bubble bigger than two inches." He shrugs.

Kate rolls her eyes, "You can't blow bubbles with spearmint gum, Castle."

Rick smirks, "I have five dollars from Ryan that says otherwise."

"Well," she says, reaching over him and into his nightstand again to search for his mints, "I want to kiss you but... can't... find..."

Rick smiles fully and cups her cheek, bringing her gaze back to him. "I think I can make an exception." Kate's smile engulfs her features as she leans down and presses her lips onto his in a full, romantic, passionate kiss, her body melting down against him. She gives him a throaty moan, reaching over to grasp the side of his neck as they kiss.

But Rick is reaching over, waving his hand around until he finds the inside of the drawer and takes hold of the small, plastic case that contains his Tic Tacs, left over from when they'd make love in the loft. Just as she's moving her lips against him to catch him in another long, passionate kiss, Rick moves the mints in front of her. She stops and pulls back suddenly, her eyes finding the small box, half full of small white mints. She gives him an obvious smile. "Thank you."

Rick smiles thankfully as she quickly pops a few Tic Tacs in her mouth and sets them on the bed next to them. She sucks on them for a few seconds before moving to lay on her side next to him, her head resting against her hand, looking down to his eyes as they lay in bed.

"That time in the supply closet was your fault, you know." She says as she sucks on the mint.

Rick raises his brow and turns his head toward her. "Excuse me, young lady, I was not the one that got off the elevator and shoved you into the door of the supply closet then thrust you into the darkness and said I couldn't wait until we got home. I believe that was you."

"You know what that black shirt with the blue pinstripes does to me, babe." She says, using his old pet name for her as if they never broke up. "You wore it on purpose that day because I had to cancel the night before." She says, pressing her finger into his chest and digging a line up through his muscles. "And besides," she smiles, "you know it was more fun at the precinct anyway. The thrill of thinking we could get caught or... the forbidden edge we had."

Rick smiles softly as he curls his arm around her. "I use to think that just us being together was enough of a thrill, but the secrecy made for some great times."

"You remember that night we had together in the Hamptons?" She asks, her eyes fixed on the line her fingers are drawing on his chest.

"Well, unwinding from having to hide things from everybody at the precinct sure didn't take anything away from it." He says with a lift in his brow.

She smiles fully, laughing softly. "Sure didn't." She says in a husky voice, looking back over to his eyes as she leans against her hand.

But in the moment their eyes meet, something comes to them. A thought, or fear, in tandem. It's enough to bring the lighthearted, post-sex banter to a dead stop, bringing the entire air of the room to a cold chill. Her eyes search his, but all she sees is the same fear she's feeling.

"Do you think-"

"You don't think that-"

They speak over each other and stop. Kate smiles nervously before he lifts his hand off the bed next to him to motion for her to continue. She nods slightly before speaking, "Rick, do you think that we can make it work without the precinct?" She asks, feeling as if she just blurted it out. She searches his eyes for the reassurance that she was so used to relying on before. Whenever she had these doubts about them and their relationship, she could always count on him to be the rock, to be the hopeful one. But all she finds now is fear and insecurity. "You don't think that we were just fooling ourselves before, do you?"

Rick takes a pause and seems to mull a few different responses over in his head before looking away.

"Because I can never go back." She continues, her throat closing and earning his worried eyes back. "I've been banned from law enforcement forever, so... so this is it, Rick."

He nods stiffly a few times before looking down the length of the bed. "You know, the old me would have said... that I fell for the woman and not the badge she carried."

She moves her jaw, clicking her teeth together for a second. "And now?"

He slowly looks back over to meet her eyes, pausing before answering her. "And now... and now it's not as easy to be as hopeful for us as I was before."

She's slow to give him a nod, flattening her hand down onto his chest. "Well, I love you, Castle." She says again, feeling as if she's saying it for the millionth time today.

But Rick softly shakes his head and looks away. "Kate, that's what we said before." She looks back over to him, her heart tensing. "We still broke up then and now we don't have anything to fall back on." He says in a tone tightly knit with worry. "We don't know that it will be enough."

"You mean," she says after him, "you don't know if it will be enough for me." She points out for him. Rick's mouth closes and his lips form a thin line, his jaw tensing. But Kate is searching her emotions, always coming to the same conclusion. "Rick, can I tell you something?"

She can hear him swallow passed the lump in his throat. "Sure."

Kate smiles softly and massages his chest with a light touch. "After I got fired from the AG's office and sent back to New York, I went to the Commissioner's office... you know, to get my old job back." The setting gets his full attention as he lifts his head and turns it to the side to face her. "And when I got to the building... you know, I saw the seal of the NYPD and... I saw the building, and I saw the emblem and the flag. I just got filled with... purpose, and determination. Just... after that long at the AG's office, to finally know what side of the fight I was on again, to know that right and wrong meant what I believed them to mean again, it felt..." she smiles, "it felt _great, _Castle."

As she looks down to him with a soft, wide smile, Rick's heart as fallen. That's never a feeling he can give her on his own.

But after a moment, her eyes seem to flood with tears and emotions seem to take a stranglehold on her features. "But when I went upstairs to talk to the receptionist, she was..." her voice breaks on an emotional chuckle, "she was drinking from a uh... from a white cardboard coffee cup... with a brown paper sleeve." She says that, and the darkness and doubt that snaked around Rick's heart seem to vanish slowly. "And I thought of you."

It's when she says that that a smile slowly appears on his features again.

"And I could have felt that feeling being with the NYPD brought me a thousand times over and it wouldn't compare to the feeling I felt when I saw something as simple as a coffee cup and got reminded of you and how much I love you." She says, looking into his eyes. "Now," she starts, petting his chest, "I'm not saying that I'll _never _have those feelings of... wanting to make a difference again... but I can promise you that you'll always make me feel more than having a badge ever could."

It's then that Rick feels his arm around her again, petting soft lines along the curve of her shoulder blade.

"So," she starts, looking down to his chest again, "maybe it's my turn to be the hopeful one for a change." She shrugs. "You believed in us against all odds for... what, five years? You stayed hopeful and optimistic and you believed in us when I faltered till the very end and when it came time, it failed because I doubted you." She admits, reaching up to cup his jaw tenderly. "I love you, Richard Castle." She says again, looking him in the eye. "Let me be the hopeful one and say that..." she smiles, "we don't need the precinct to define who we are. And that not having the precinct can mean that we can have more days like this."

He smiles and raises his brow. "You mean just lying naked in bed all day?"

"Yeah," she says in a face splitting smile, "the only chance we ever got to just spend all day in bed alone was when I was on suspension when we first started dating."

"Well," he starts and flattens his hand onto her back, pulling her on top of him as she curls her body over him again, dragging her leg up his underneath the single thin sheet that remains on the bed, "we're not... _totally _alone." He says, lifting his head off the pillow to look down to the foot of the bed. "Sasha's been watching us for a while now."

Kate chuckles and looks down to the end of the bed, Seeing Sasha's ears perk up at the attention from both humans on the bed. "Is she this demanding of attention all the time?" She asks him.

"Well, she's terrified of thunder, so she's been hiding underneath my desk all morning." He explains as he sends his dog a smile. After a moment, Rick pats the bed with his hand. "Come on!"

Sasha whimpers happily and jumps up on the bed, earning a laugh from both of the humans in bed as she settles her large frame against Rick's opposite side, rolling onto her back and twisting into an odd shape with her legs pointed straight up at the ceiling. Rick laughs as he scratches Sasha's belly.

But as Kate watches him, playing with his dog in bed, she gets a feeling in her heart, a want almost. She can't help but wonder what it would be like for them... for her... what it would feel like if their own child were to climb into bed with them to roughhouse with Daddy.

The thought consumes her as she watches Rick play with Sasha and she finds herself leaning down into his side, cuddling up against him and pressing her ear to his heart.

He'd make an amazing father.

He _is _an amazing father.

* * *

_A/N: Sorry for the delay. I'm a little busy so I can only write on the weekends most of the time. Thankfully, I managed to get in another scene of them together. Let me know what you think of this one. I wanted to get all I could out of the M rating. Thanks in advance. :]_


	35. Chapter 35

It's still raining, but the thunder and lightning has rolled off into the distance. She can see the flashes of the sheet lightning from the French doors that face out toward the lake. The light rain still falls in soft, quiet drips, the wind gently rustling the tops of the Evergreen trees that make up the woods on the other side of the lake.

Her clothes are still warm from the dryer, but she still has a dark brown blanket draped over her shoulders that she grabbed from the back of the couch on her way out. Her and Rick had slowly dragged themselves out of bed after spending the majority of the afternoon together with not even a single bedsheet separating them, searching and reveling in the closeness that they both loved so much before. Rick got dressed in his jeans, a loose-fitting grey t-shirt and a tan flannel left hanging open and made his way into the kitchen as she headed into the laundry room to get dressed... finally.

She can't remember the last time they just spent the entire day in bed, finding solace in each other's bodies and presence, reminding themselves why they fought so hard with themselves to get where they were. They spent the entire day rediscovering that they have a connection, a way of fitting together when the rest of the world is out of their way that they don't have to work at or force, one that just happens.

She can feel it now, even as he's a distance away in the kitchen finding something to satisfy an appetite that's been eating at them both after a long day of passionate love-making. Feeling what she feels now, she can see why, and more importantly how, he stayed as hopeful for them as he always did. How he had such confidence in the knowledge that what they had wasn't just true, but special and worth everything they went through to get it. She can honestly tell herself, without any reservation, that she's never felt this in love with someone before.

When the thought skates across her brain, her soft smile starts to widen across her features as she pulls at the sides of the brown blanket draped over her shoulders. After a moment of wanting to fight it, she hides her smile by pressing the blanket to her face, standing in front of the French doors that lead out to the patio, now absentmindedly watching the rain sprinkle over the lake.

This is how he stayed so hopeful. It's been hard and tasking, she'll probably look back on this as the hardest thing she's ever had to do, chasing after him after what she did to them. But here, right now, she'll remember as the moment where she knew it was worth it, and she'd do it again if she had to... just to feel like this.

As Rick all too slowly reaches around the kitchen to prepare each of them a meager lunch of a chicken salad sandwich and some potato chips on two plates, he's been watching her stand at the door out of the corner of his eye.

He's been wanting to feel that closeness that he knows she's letting fill her. He can see that feeling in her eye, it's in that sparkle in those beautiful hazel eyes and that beautiful smile she's trying to hide beneath the blanket Sasha curls up with. He remembers that closeness and intimacy that just felt so damn natural for them. That feeling in the pits of his heart and his soul when their eyes would meet and inevitably lock with one another.

That feeling just feels like a distraction that leaves him vulnerable to heartbreak now. Like if he lets it in and lets it take him over like he used to, he's going to miss some sign telling him it's all about to get pulled out from under him again. A sign like Vaughn, or some male dancer at some male strip club, or the AG's office.

Sasha's nails tapping against the tile in the kitchen stirs him from his spiral. He looks over and sees his faithful dog sitting at his side with her long, bushy tail sweeping across the floor and her ears perked up, waiting for her human to feed her something like he always does when there's food involved.

A brief smirk flicking onto his face, he grabs a piece of chicken from the bowl and flicks it over to her and Sasha snaps it up in her mouth happily. He looks down to the counter to the late lunch or early dinner he's prepared for them, laid out on two plates picture perfect, then looks back up to her still standing at the doors that lead out back. He watches for a moment after picking the plates up as her eyes flick down to the floor, then drift shut while her smile softens under the blanket she's hiding it with.

He wants this to work. For once, he wants to put in what it takes to make it work for them. But as Sierra made it clear to him, none of it is on her. She's made it clear that she's here for him, for them, and their future together. A future with her, it's what he always wanted for as long as he can remember knowing her. He just has to actually believe that someone cares enough to stick around for it for a change. He has to believe that someone believes a future with up would be a good thing, as opposed to some sort of dark cave with no ending, fun for exploring for a while until it caves in and you're trapped inside.

Rick hardens himself and slowly pads his way out of the kitchen and makes his way over to the dining table, setting the two plates down in the corner, perpendicular to each other as quietly as he can, then turns toward her. He can feel his stomach flutter for a second, thinking the feeling will go away as he steps up behind her. But the flutter only intensifies as his arms move to slowly sneak around her.

But Kate can feel his warmth and presence from what feels like a mile away, and is already sinking back to meet him.

Kate's body drifts back and lays against his chest while his arms move around her waist. Her head lists off to the left, her skin already tingling at the feeling of his lips. But Rick settles for a quick nuzzle of her hair with the tip of his nose.

"I hope you still like chicken salad." He coaxes her in that low gruff breathed into her ear.

"Mmm..." she moans, letting him take her weight against him as she leans back, resting her head back onto his shoulder, "with the raisins and nuts you use?" She can almost feel him smile with her hair.

"I even remembered to toast the bread the way you like." He tries to brag.

Kate pulls her eyes open and lethargically lifts her head off his shoulders, turning around in his arms to face him, looking over to the table, where he has a perfectly delicious lunch laid out for them. Looking at the meal he's prepared for them, she feels her heart turn into a butterfly. Instinctively, she puts her arms around his neck, enveloping them both in the blanket she has draped around her, Rick pulling her back in and lacing his fingers together at the small of her back.

Her eyes are locked onto the sandwiches, almost burning with tears. "I remember how you use to cook for us." She thinks out loud, getting overwhelmed when her mind travels back to the times she was either forced to go back to her apartment in DC by the lack of work or more often, by her supervisory agent and finding nothing but the cycle of styrofoam boxes that would come and go. "It was one of the things I probably missed the most when we broke up." She admits, her voice choked and soiled.

Rick tries to pull her closer, trying to coax her into a better mood. "I'm almost afraid to tell you I was going to make dinner also." An emotional chuckle sneaks out of her as she swats at the tears with her fingers before curling her arms into the cove of their bodies. "I had planned on making fajitas, but if you're going to be so emotional about it-"

"No, no," she reassures him, tapping his chest with a watery smile. "I just got to thinking about how much I could've used you when I was in DC."

The pleasant smile that was gracing his features quickly vanishes when she brings it up. He feels himself stiffen while her arms drape themselves back around his neck. He doesn't want to bring it up, but he just told himself that he needs to have the strength to put in the work they need if they're going to make it work. He can't shy away from it just because it's hard to bring up. "I thought the whole idea of you taking the DC job in the first place was that you didn't need me at all."

Her tears freeze on her face and her expression darkens, but only for a second before it pulls into a look of shame. Her eyes fall away from their lunch and down into the small space between them. "Castle, you don't know how much I wish my job at the AG's office never happened."

He feels his jaw click in frustration, a conflict going on inside of him thinking he's not allowed to feel that way. "I don't?" He fires back, not wanting it to sound the way it did.

But Kate is already shaking her head in a soft, emotional defiance as he gets the words out. "Rick, that job..." she starts, looking him in the eye, "took _everything_... from me." She says, wishing he would reach up and wipe away the tracks of her tears with his thumb like he used to. "And it wasn't even _worth _it. I _hated _being at the AG's office, Rick."

His brow pinches, suddenly at a loss. "What are you talking about?" He asks quickly, not really believing her. "You gave up our relationship for that job, Beckett." He starts, even as she's already shaking her head again. "You said it was about your future, that it was your shot, that-"

"I know..." she interrupts in a strained voice, trailing off as she traces the cloth outline on his t-shirt and leaning her body into him. "You know, Castle," she starts quickly, speaking the thought as it comes to her, "everybody talks about the other side of the hill... and what happens is that the grass isn't always greener." She says to him, looking down to his chest and wanting his arms to engulf her tighter than they are now, instead of just limply hanging around her waist. "What they never talk about is what happens when you try to go back to the other side."

Rick breathes out a cold, hard breath, giving himself a small nod as he looks at her, standing in his arms. "Is this your way of saying you worried if this will work?" He asks in a cold, steady voice. It gains her sad attention as she cranes her neck to send a pair of large, sad, hazel eyes up at him.

A brief smile flicks across her features when she moves her arms back up his shoulders and around his neck. "Are you worried?"

Rick breaks the eye contact, quickly weaving his arms around her figure and splaying his hands out on her back. All he can offer her is a shallow nod and a shameful gaze down to the floor. She's silent, deciding that a retort about how he should be isn't the best way to handle it, and instead puts a hand on the back of his head, scratching her nails into his hair in a soft tickle before petting it back down. "I know I shouldn't be. You're here, we've been together all day, you haven't even hinted at wanting to leave."

"Rick," she chuckles softly, petting his hair with a smile, trying to regain his eyes with the motion. When all he does is move his hands around her back for a moment and stiffen his spine, rolling his shoulders back, he looks up at her with all traces of negative emotion drained from his features. Or at least he's making an effort. She just offers him a smile and nods over to the table. "Let's eat, okay?"

He gives her a small grin and takes the blanket from around her shoulders. As Kate pulls out one of the chairs at the table, Rick takes the blanket and hands it down to Sasha, who's been sitting beside them patiently. Sasha takes a couple sniffs of the blanket, recognizes it as her's, and takes it gently in her teeth, dragging it over to the French doors and laying down.

Rick and Kate eat mostly silently, with Rick getting the hiccups after a few bites of his sandwich and Kate eagerly complimenting him on his cooking after when she's half done with her own.

When both their plates are cleared, leaving only small bits of chips that are too small to even taste, Rick takes a napkin from the ceramic holder in the center of the table and wipes his mouth before standing up and reaching for her plate. "Mmm!" She hums just before swallowing the last few chips left in her mouth, waving him off as she reaches for a napkin herself. Rick stops, his hand already extended. "Leave it." She says as she stands up.

Rick follows her as she stands up with his eyes. "Leave it?"

"Yes, leave it." She annunciates and reaches for his hand with a smile. "I'll take care of it later." She promises as she takes his hand and leads the way into the family room and over to the couch. "Because right now," she continues, stepping in between the coffee table and the couch, "there's something I've wanted to do..." she says and sits down in the far end of the couch, "for a long time."

Rick smirks, somewhat heavily, as she looks up to him with a smile. "And..." he starts and sits down next to her, leaning over to her, "I can't help but wonder what there is that we haven't done yet."

Kate gives him an obvious, deadpan look.

"Because we've done just about everything."

Kate starts with a nod, "Just," she says, reaching around him, "lay down," she ushers him, softly nudging his head down toward her lap, "like this." She waits for him to readjust himself longways along the couch and to lay his head down in her lap as she leans back into the cushions. "There."

Gently, slowly, tenderly, and lovingly, Kate looks down to his eyes with a smile and a wild flutter in her chest, seeing him look back up to her with a curious twinkle in his eye, and puts one hand on his chest, and the other on his hair, softly petting it back in a long, slow motion. After the first soft stroke, Rick relaxes on a long breath and locks eyes with her, focusing on the feeling of her hand moving back up and petting his hair back in the same long, slow motion.

"This is what you've wanted to do for so long?" He asks in a soft, curious voice as she moves to pet his hair back again.

She smiles, "Mmhmm," she gives him a nod, stroking his chest in the same motion. "When I was in my apartment in DC at night, I'd be sitting on my couch and eating or I'd be watching TV or reading and just... imagine you laying your head in my lap and looking up at me... while I just petted your hair back and looked into your eyes."

That gets to him, on some deeper level like he's never felt. "Y-you..." he struggles, looking up into her sparkling, happy eyes as she continues to stroke back his hair, "you thought about doing _this... _while you were in DC?"

Her smile widens for a quick moment. "Mmhmm." She hums and pets his hair back again, moving her fingers across his scalp this time. She watches as he takes in a breath, but stops it short of saying something. Kate blinks, moving her other hand up his chest to try and coax whatever he wanted to say out of him. "What?"

Rick offers a small shake of his head, lifting his hands off his stomach and reaching up, laying one down on top of her forearm. "I've just never had anyone that... well, that wanted to do something like this."

Kate blinks slowly as she pets back his hair again. "Really?"

He shakes his head for an answer. Looking up into her eyes as she smiles down to him, feeling her pet his hair back in such a loving motion and massage is chest in a sensual circle over his heart, he feels his heart and stomach fold into one, breaking apart in him. "I guess it's just hard to imagine I mean that much to someone."

Her throat closes at the scared tone in his voice, feeling his fingers wrap around her forearm. "Why?" She asks, looking down to his eyes and continuing to pet his hair back. "You're an amazing man, Castle." She says and watches for the glimmer in his eye to fade, that never does.

As she moves her hand back up to pet his hair back again, he feels like she could drudge up anything. Laying in her lap like this, looking up at her, he's never been looked at before. "I guess I never really got to know what it was like, that's all." He says, trying to feign a voice of uninterest. "Growing up the way I did."

Kate doesn't take her hand out of his hair and instead weaves her hand back up so it doesn't lose contact until she's petting it back again. "Tell me about it."

He swallows thickly and can't look away from her loving, curious gaze. It's a long moment before he decides on what to say, just silently staring up at her. "You know, I know we had money and that I never really wanted for anything... but..." she can tell it's hurting him, "honestly, my mother had to go on the road a lot so I spent a lot of time with caretakers or in boarding schools... mostly boarding schools in my early teens after she just got fed up with me. It's just a um..." he struggles, "it's a different feeling when the only time you got to see your own mother was during the holidays and she was upset with you because you got in trouble."

Kate pets his hair back slowly, rubbing his chest tenderly and feeling his palm sweat against her forearm. "So," she tries, thinking back to the dock when he asked about what she thought of her own childhood, "when you think back to your childhood... what's the first thing that you think of?"

Rick blinks, his brow arched while she continues to pet back his hair. His eyes lid slowly and he blinks, giving her a feigned shrug. "Sitting in the Dean's office for a parent-teacher conference and hearing my mother come on the line with the first thing out of her mouth being 'what is it this time'?"

She feels her heart fold in her chest. She reaches over and moves her hand from his chest over to his jaw, petting his stubble with her thumb. She can't say anything worth much. "I'm sorry."

He just shakes his head in her arms and shrugs. "It's just hard to believe that someone like you could manage to do something that I grew up thinking my own mother didn't even do."

Kate gives him a solemn nod and moves her hand back to his chest while she pets his hair back again. "You know, Sierra told me last night that I was the first person in your whole life to love you for you." Rick just holds her gaze as Kate waits for him to interrupt her to ask when Sierra came to talk to her. But after a moment, he just stays silent and Kate moves to pet his hair back again. "Is that because of what you just told me?"

He blinks, waiting for her hand to come to a stop in his hair before he answers. "I wasn't looking for any pity, if that's what you're getting at."

Kate smiles and shakes her head, moving to pet his hair back again. "No, Rick," she starts, moving her opposite hand to his jaw again, "knowing this about you... it just makes me love you more."

When he hears it, feeling her tender, loving hands on his face and in his hair, seeing her bright eyes and her soft smile, his heart clenches. Without warning, he leans up off her lap and captures her lips in a firm but sensual kiss. Kate draws in a breath as he presses his lips up to her and takes his face in her hands, accepting him eagerly and melting into him.

"Mmm..." she moans into his mouth.

After he reaches up to kiss her again, he starts to crawl up the couch. At the same time, Kate starts to climb out from under him, along the back of the couch until she's settled on top of him along the length of the couch, their lips never parting. Her body melts against him as his lips work perfectly around her's, kissing her in long, slow, passionate motions. His arms hug her waist while her hands find his jaw and his hair. Neither make no moves to advance them any further than this, both just laying here, slowly kissing each other.

She can't remember the last time they've just laid together and kissed.

"Mmm," she moans again when she feels him trace his finger back behind her ear before cupping her jaw, "I love you, Rick." He kisses her again, pulling her down and pinching her bottom lip in his mouth, slowly peeling it away and making her shiver in his arms. That's always driven her crazy.

"Does that mean you're staying for dinner?" He asks before kissing her again.

She smiles against his lips before accepting the kiss. "It means that I love you."

He answers her by capturing her lips again and moving his arms around her, hugging her down to him. But as he's running his hand up the dip of her spine, lost in her lips, they both hear Sasha let out a loud bark from the dining room, but not the key being shoved into the door.

* * *

_A/N: Yep, I'm back writing, no excuse other than life. Is that good enough? Hope you enjoyed the chapter. I know a lot of stories like this fizzle out pretty much right after Rick and Kate get together, since storytelling wise, there's really nowhere left to go, but that's not the reason for the hiatus. I have a very clear plan and the next chapter will begin to pick things up. _


	36. Chapter 36

_A/N: There's going to be a bit of a long-winded AN at the end of the chapter that I'll most likely edit out after all the reviews come it, explaining the chapter itself and why I've been absent. Hope you guys like it /=]_

* * *

Her lips sink down against his in the same slow, gentle speed that his hands are moving up her back with, his fingers splaying out widely. She can feel his smile tighten his lips when he tries to open up and kiss her fully and it makes her smile fully, feeling a wild flutter in her chest that he's smiling while he's kissing her again, laid on top of him on his couch. Yesterday, she probably didn't realize just how special that feeling she got was when they couldn't kiss each other properly because they were both smiling too much.

"You've missed this too, haven't you?" She asks in an airy, husky voice as she opens her mouth fully to slowly edge her tongue inside.

"Huh," he chuckles from his chest as his lips accept her in another slow motion.

"_Rowf!" _Sasha barks at the door again.

When the storm lining at the bottom of the door scrapes against the jam as it opens, Rick and Kate both jolt against each other in one joint, overly swift movement. Rick's hands fly off her back and his legs spring up off the armrest on the other end of the couch while Kate's hands move out of his disheveled hair and plant against his shoulders, shoving herself off of him from laying flat on top of him like a blanket to now just arching her back off of him.

It only takes another split second for both Rick and Kate to look over to the front door, with Rick twisting his neck and hanging his head off the edge of the couch and Kate's hair looking frizzy from not being washed or dried properly from the rain, as both of them look over to Alexis with puffy lips and looks on their faces that they're in a state teetering between zen and reality.

Alexis stands in the doorway, frozen. Her brow is firm, set in a straight line and her jaw slack. Clad in a dark green, baggy, worn cargo jacket with thin fabric that looks far too big and far too masculine to be anything that came from her own closet, Alexis lets Sasha push against her legs, making her balance waver like a tree caught in the wind. The girl lets Sasha go ignored as the collie rubs against her legs and looks up to her, waiting for her well deserved attention.

"Umm..." Rick is the first to start, feeling like he just rammed his head straight into the wall of awkwardness by being the first to talk, "hey, sweetie." He says before looking down to the jacket she has on and creasing his brow. "What're you wearing?"

While Kate stares between them widely, not making any motion to get him unpinned from under her, Alexis blinks just once before responding. "It's... It's Ethan's."

Rick's brow lifts on one side as he pushes himself slightly more upright to look at his daughter right side up, sliding out from under Kate. He notices she's frozen and the skin on her arm feels jittery when she moves her hands off his chest to brace herself against the cushion. "You two are already in the wearing his jacket phase? You've only been dating for two months.'

Alexis keeps staring at them widely, still standing in the doorway with Sasha rubbing herself against her legs before sitting down on her shoes and looking up at her. "He wanted me to wear it." She states in a small voice. "It was raining last night."

Rick nods at his daughter for a moment before closing his mouth and looking up at her again. "Um..." he tries, blinking and lifting his brow in a casual expression, feigning tossing off the moment, "that was chivalrous of him, I guess."

Alexis's cheeks suddenly flush and her eyes flit away from the two of them, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. "Yeah," she says simply and looks down to the large dog laying at her feet on her back, waving her front paws back and forth. Rick looks down to Sasha and watches as Alexis leans down, gives Sasha a belly rub with a smile, then look back up to him. "I think she might need to go out."

Rick gives Alexis a simple nod, watching with a nervous flutter in his stomach as his daughter scratches and loves on the family dog for a moment before pulling on the strap of her shoulder bag and turning down the hall behind her, a smile still visible on her features. Once she's out of sight, Rick lets out a large breath in one quick sigh, acting relieved as Kate presses up to sit on her knees over his legs.

"That went well." Rick points out, looking back over to Kate, raising his brow innocently.

Kate, who still has a shocked expression etched on her face, looks over to him, and runs a hand back over her hair to get it out of her face before giving him a pinched brow and a curious glare. "Castle, your daughter just caught us making out on the couch." She points out obviously, lifting her arm up to the hallway that Sasha is just now walking back away from.

Rick just smirks and pulls his legs out from under her, leaving her to fall down to the back cushion cross-legged. "It could have been worse." He starts as his dog comes up and presses herself in the space between his legs, finding her master's hands. "At least we were just making out." He says, eyeing her up and down. "Your hands tend to start wandering fairly quickly, Beckett."

Kate's brow furrows deeply as he looks down to Sasha, who is starting to whimper. He doesn't seem to grasp what just happened, the gravity of it.

"You finally ready to go out?" He asks his dog, whose back end starts wagging excitedly. "Okay, come on." He stands up, "I'll be back." He says and quickly follows Sasha as she darts toward the French doors.

"Um..." Kate scrambles to go after him, "Castle?" She says as he's pulling on his shoes. Rick gives her his eyes just as he's leaning back up and grabbing the leash off the hook next to the door. "Alexis just caught us making out."

Rick's expression falls, feeling himself stop. "You're not bothered that she knows about us, are you?" He asks, his tone almost feeling accusatory.

Kate feels herself lock up, because this is what she was afraid of. Coming between him and his daughter. "No..." she tries, wanting to continue to explain. She can't seem to find the right words. "No." She says again to finish.

Rick eyes her, shifting between a look of curiosity, longing, and worry before his attention is stolen again by the sound of a loud, high-pitched whimper of his dog waiting impatiently by the door. He just nods, hooks Sasha onto her leash, then goes out the door, a gust of cold mist and air breezing over to her from her place standing between the dining table and the couch. As she watches the man she loves through the glass of the door, her heart already longs for him.

When her eyes dart down to the dishes she told him to leave alone, she swallows past her swelling nerves, brushes her hair unruly hair back behind her ear, and pads as quietly as she can over to the table, taking up the two plates and heads for the kitchen. When she turns into the kitchen, she's startled for a second, feeling frightened when she sees Alexis already standing at the island on the other side of the kitchen, still in her boyfriend's jacket that looks loose and baggy on her, leaning on the counter over her phone.

Kate freezes, her usual nerves of steel feeling weak and unreliable. She gulps again and quietly moves over to the sink with the dishes, feeling Alexis' eyes on her as she nears the sink.

There's only one person on the planet that could tell her that they didn't want her near the man she loves and she'd have no choice but to listen and walk away, and that person is hovering over her phone, eyeing her out of the corner of her eye. Alexis is the only person that could tell her that she doesn't want Kate around him anymore and she'd have to listen. Even Martha, to some extent, could tell her the same thing and she'd put up a fight. But she won't be the thing that comes between him and his daughter.

Kate runs some water to clean the crumbs off the plates before slipping them into the dishwasher. She leans back up, casting a glance over to Alexis when she sees the screen of her phone light up. Kate watches as Alexis takes her phone, pauses for a second before pressing the lock button and slipping her phone back into the pocket of her boyfriend's jacket.

Alexis starts with a slight clearing of her throat. "So," she cuts through, her voice having the slightest shake to it as she gets Kate's full attention. Kate freezes as she lets the door to the dishwasher close. "You and my dad are..."

Kate musters up a forced, nervous smile, letting her weight shift undecided between leaning forward on the island and leaning back against the counter. "Yeah," she finally says, leaning forward on the island finally. "As of... just this morning, actually."

Alexis nods, her eyes seeming to crinkle with a smile that doesn't seem to appear. She pushes out a breath and looks away. "I'm glad." She says, her voice sounding tight and nervous.

Kate nods, wondering why the girl sounds just as nervous and tightly wound as she does. It makes her stop, not sure of how to approach the situation anymore. She was going to let her take the lead, try to reassure her that she was going to do the right thing this time around. "Me too." Kate says, trying to get a handle on just what the girl is feeling. "It still feels... new... kind of, but..." Kate nervously takes the lead, "but the foundation is still there, so... we still..."

After a pause, Alexis looks up with her neck craned. "Fit?"

Kate musters up another, softer smile, giving her a nod. "Yeah."

Alexis nods with her and looks back down to the counter. "That's good," she says in a small voice, sounding timid. It's a moment before Kate watches her draw in a hard breath, her shoulders rising, then letting it out slowly. "I know how happy you make him, s-so I'm glad that you got everything worked out."

Kate feels her heart skip at that. They've made incredible progress, and they are back together, but... they still have things to work out. A lot of things. "Well," Kate chuckles, pushing back her hair behind both ears, then going to try and smooth the top out, "I can't say we've worked everything out, but..."

She pauses and Alexis reaches inside of her jacket sleeve and pulls a black hair tie off her wrist, taking Kate's wrangling with her hair as a cue for the gesture and handing her the hair tie. Kate eyes the hair tie with a surprised smile then looks up to Alexis and after a moment, both smiling knowingly, they chuckle softly as Kate takes the hair tie and begins to wrangle in her hair, tying it back into a ponytail.

"It will be a while until we've worked everything out, so I think both of us just want to settle back into a flow of things first." Kate explains.

Alexis nods before giving a slight eye roll. "As long as he can go back to his normal self, I'm happy." She says, almost off-handedly.

But it gets Kate's attention, and she looks over to her with a slight worry furrowing in her brow. "Alexis," Kate almost chuckles, "when you came by the shop that day you said..." she begins, stopping when Alexis looks over to her, "you said that he was content but... that you knew he wasn't happy ." Alexis gives her a small nod. Kate feels her nerves prickle at the top of her spine again, seeing Alexis recall that afternoon when she came by the shop to talk to her. "What did you mean by that?"

Alexis seems to shrink back, curling her shoulders in slightly and pinching at the sleeves of her boyfriend's jacket to bury herself in it as much as she can before she starts, looking down to the counter. After another moment to collect her thoughts, Alexis shrugs one-sidedly and looks away. "He was fine as long as he kept himself busy."

Kate blinks, her mind trying to form a thought. "So... he wrote a lot?"

But Alexis is quick to shake her head, still not meeting Kate's eyes as they fill with sadness. "He hasn't written anything since we left New York." Kate can feel her heart fold, almost violently, sure she's not hiding the feeling with her expression. Alexis reaches up and grasps her arm, squeezing the fabric of the green jacket before drawing in a breath and looking over to her. "Writing makes him think of you now so he just stopped." Kate gives her head a slight toss before looking down to the granite counter on the island. "No, he just did other things... work out, teach Sasha tricks," Alexis looks out toward the French doors that lead to the back patio, "build a brick barbeque."

Kate tests her breath, letting it out in a slow stream out her nose to steady it.

"It..." Alexis starts again timidly, looking over to the other side of the kitchen, still clutching the sleeve of her jacket, "was almost enough to make me wish he'd never met you." Kate looks over to her, her blood curdling. This is what she was deathly terrified of. "Because I knew..." she continues, but struggles, "that you were his... his _one_. But... seeing him after losing you..." hearing the girl's tone, Kate looks over to her, studying her a bit more, the way she's pinching the worn cuff of her boyfriend's jacket with her finger and thumb, the way she's clutching the sleeve, "almost makes you think you're better off never meeting that person."

Kate observes Alexis's tone, her wording, her behavior, but when Alexis looks over to her and seems to betray the feigned meaning of the conversation by giving her an arched brow of fear, Kate feels calmed. "Well, Alexis," Kate quickly starts with a soft smile after the realization, "take it from someone who used to live by those words, you're not better off."

When Alexis meets Kate's eyes with a glimmer, she nods and looks away again. Kate shuffles as Alexis seems to retreat into her thoughts.

"Um..." Kate attempts to break the ice before it forms, "Alexis, have you talked to your dad about how you feel about this guy?" She asks, trying for a tone that doesn't seem as if she's pressing the girl too hard.

Alexis silently shakes her head and looks over to her. "Not really." Kate just gives her an assuring nod. "I mean," she says with a smile flashing onto her face for a moment, "I love that I'll always be his little girl but... I'll always be his little girl and to him, no one will ever be good enough for his little girl."

Kate smiles naturally, knowing that short phase in her pre-teens that her and her dad went through. "Alexis, that's how it's supposed to be."

Alexis smiles, but rolls her eyes, much the same way she does when Castle says something totally inappropriate but something that she needed at the same time. "Ethan said the same thing." Kate turns over to her with a raised brow. "To be honest, Beckett," Alexis starts, rushed and breathlessly, "I would be hiding up in my room right now, but... he told me that I should talk to you." Alexis pauses before waving her hand in the air, "And when I pointed out that he wasn't here to back me up like last time he jokingly pointed out to 'be chivalrous'." She says with a set of air quotes.

Kate raises her brow again, teasing an expectant smile. "Be chivalrous?"

Alexis smiles despite herself. "When he gave me his jacket, I told him it was very chivalrous of him and he went on to explain how the word chivalrous derives from the French word 'cheval' and was used in medieval times to describe a knight who fought on horseback... and how he couldn't actually ride a horse."

Kate smiles brightly, chuckling softly which encourages Alexis's face to light up with a smile of her own. "So I don't have to worry about you charging at me with a lance or anything, do I?" Alexis giggles and shakes her head. "Alexis," Kate starts in a more serious tone, "you shouldn't be afraid to fall for somebody."

Alexis expression falls and it's a moment before she looks over to her again. "But how did you know?" She asks, her voice small. "I mean," she struggles, breathing out a hard sigh, "was there a moment like everyone talks about that you were convinced that you were in love or?"

Kate smiles softly. "No, there wasn't." She answers, looking over to the girl with soft eyes. "What I had instead was a moment when I couldn't convince myself of anything else... and I couldn't make excuses anymore."

"B-but..." Alexis attempts again on another hard breath, just as Rick cracks open the French door a tad to watch them, "how did you know for certain... that my dad was it for you? That he was the one you wanted to be with and marry a-and... and how can I really think that feeling they way about someone is a good thing when I know what happened between you and him?"

Kate nods slowly, giving Alexis a reassuring smile. "I knew he was it because he convinced me of it." She says softly but confidently. "He spent every day convincing me he was it for me until I couldn't deny it anymore, and eventually, couldn't imagine it being any other way. I know it sounds cliche, Alexis, because..." Kate says, her smile brightening as her eyes fall away, "I rolled my eyes when my mother told me this in high school, but... when you know, you know." Kate's heart swells slightly, the words filling her.

Rick smiles to himself from outside, wishing he could be as certain as her.

Alexis nods slowly, her eyes falling back down to the counter as she clutches the sleeve of her boyfriend's jacket again. "And... you still know? For certain? Even after everything that happened?" She asks, sounding as if she wants to know how as opposed to test her. Rick shuffles his weight quietly from outside, looking down to Sasha and keeping her quiet by massaging her thick German Shepard ears.

Kate keeps her reassuring smile pointed toward her. "It's because of what happened that I'll never doubt where I belong again, Alexis." That's enough to cause a heavy glimmer and sad smile to appear on Alexis's face as she looks up to Kate. "Take it from someone who found the love of their life and thought there was still something better out there, Alexis... if this guy does end up convincing you, which.. ." Kate starts with a slight smirk, reaching over to tug at the jacket Alexis is still clutching with her thumb and forefinger, "he seems to be doing already, then don't let it go. You'll end up spending the rest of your life running away from things just because they remind you of him. And if you spend as much time together as he and I did, you'll end up having to run away from an awful lot."

Outside, Rick's head falls. He ran away from everything because he loved her so much. It didn't solve anything. He was just as in love with her the day she appears out of nowhere in the parking lot of the grocery store here in Crestfield. It hurt, but he still loved her.

Alexis cranes her neck, deep in thought as her thumb and finger rub against the fabric of the cuff on her jacket. "Just," Kate begins in a less serious tone, lifting her hand of the counter, "don't go off and... rush... into anything, okay?" Alexis looks over to her with a crooked brow and sly smirk. "Believe me, your dad would have my head if you did and found out that you got the idea from me."

Alexis laughs and pushes off the edge of the island, "You can tell my dad not to worry." She says, backing out of the kitchen. "You two can have the couch all to yourselves if you know what I mean."

Kate smiles as Alexis moves out of the kitchen, then turns around, her heart fluttering, then starts out of the kitchen. Her eyes turned down to the floor, she moves out of the kitchen and toward the dining area when she feels a hand grab her arm and yank her forward. "_Woah!" _She exclaims quickly before her lips get slammed onto him. "_Mmm!" _She gives him a quick moan, kissing him fully as she presses up on her toes, his hands clutching her arms and pulling her against him. After the feeling overtakes her, the passion melts her and she goes limp, pulling at the bottom of his shirt with weak hands.

He lets her go with a soft plunk, the silence of the house allowing them to hear the sound of a pair of car doors getting closed from across the street.

"Mmm..." she moans as her eyes flutter open, seeing him look down to her with a lovingly soft smile. "I'm almost afraid to ask what that was about." She says in a low, husky voice.

Rick smirks, trailing his hands down her arms and tugging at her hips. "Why?"

She snakes her hands up his firm chest, swirling her finger around over his heart before sliding her arms around his neck. "Because I might not be able to do whatever it was again."

Rick's smirk softens into a smile as he clasps his hands together behind her back. "Alexis always needed someone like you in her life." He says, hearing the faint chatter of a police radio from outside.

"Alexis is a great person, Castle. You should be proud of that."

"Hmm," Rick hums with a smile despite himself, "I'm proud of her, but sometimes I know she wishes she did have someone like you in her life." He says, only giving Kate his eyes after a long moment to himself. "A mother." Kate reaches up, putting her fingertips in his hair on the back of his head softly.

Kate smiles and pulls him closer, moving her arms tighter around him, rolling her eyes as she does. "Pump the brakes a bit, Castle. I'm not exactly a mother yet."

Just as Rick moves his eyes over to her again, his brow shifting at her words, they both hear a scream come from the outside. "_Nooooo!" _They hear a yell, being broken by intense sobs.

Kate looks over toward the front door. "What was that?"

Rick moves out of her arms and toward the door. "It came from Cecelia and Greg's house." He says, quickly darting to the front door and pulling it open.

With a Crestfield police cruiser parked in their driveway, Andy is in uniform at their door, where Greg has his arms around his wife Cecelia, trying to keep her from falling to the floor. "_Nooooo-oo-ooo-ooo!" _Cecelia wails again, finally falling to the ground in her husband's arms.

Rick feels Kate clutch at his arm for a moment before he moves to jog across the street. Andy, the portlier, curly-haired officer is still at their door while his partner Andrew, a tall, bald, lengthy man is walking away, his face pale, rubbing the back of his neck. "Andrew." Rick calls as he reaches the edge of their driveway, hearing Kate trail behind him.

Andrew looks up, his expression still almost ghostly. "Castle... it's uh... something, ain't it?"

"What? What's going on?" Rick asks, his body starting to vibrate as his nerves begin to fire off.

"What happened?" Kate asks from his side.

Andrew's brow pinches curiously. "You didn't hear? Chief said he was going to call you."

With Cecelia still sobbing loudly in her husband's arms, Rick's heart feels stabbed as it lodges in his throat. "What happened?" He asks in a scared voice, his eyes going between Greg and Cecelia on the ground and Andrew.

The officer pushes out a shaky breath and shuffles. "T-they um... they found Sierra's body half an hour ago."

Rick feels everything in him fall apart as Kate grabs onto his hand with a tight grip."

"She was murdered."

* * *

_A/N: Ah yes, the "Oh wow! I wonder what's going to happen next!" moment. How cliche! _

_There are moments in most shows, movies, and books that are guilty of what I'm about to explain, including Castle sadly. When writers run out of ideas for something, they make something happen to simply keep the audiences attention. The writer doesn't know what's going to happen anymore than the reader or viewer does. They're along for the ride with you, as one youtuber who explained it put. Castle is guilty of this in the end of season 6 which Rick getting abducted. They had no clue why that happened. They just wanted you to stick around. Most of the time, these end up ruining good stories as the writer ends up having to scramble to explain things away. _

_But I wouldn't have started this story if I didn't have it planned from beginning to end. _

_As for my absence, I can only blame it on total melt down of my computer, followed by just saving up for the high end gaming system I've always wanted, followed by getting it, followed by the pandemic that make my working hours crazy because the other guy in my dept. quit where I'm running up to seven different machines at one time now. So what little free time I do have, I couldn't focus on writing. But my job is finally starting to slow down a bit, so I'm hoping things will get back to normal. As I said, I'll probably edit this AN out once all the reviews come in. I just know that a lot of people have been eagerly awaiting this stories return and will probably be mad at me for coming back and making them read this part. But thank you for all the continued support throughout my hiatus. _


	37. Chapter 37

It's a sickening feeling, out of body, otherworldly almost as Andrew's words hit him.

His senses go offline. Kate's hand clutching his doesn't even register to him, or her pulling at his forearm with her other hand to pull herself into him slightly. It's almost like his mind forgot how to even let his body breathe. The only thing he can feel is his heartbeat... something in between pumping so hard it feels about to burst and holding onto all the blood it can. His eyes lose focus of Andrew, who's shuffling away from him and back to his patrol car, and trail away. The next thing he feels is something pulling at his arm, turning him and softly taking his other arm in a soft grip.

"Castle," Kate tries again, never having seen him act like this. He's never just shut down like this. "Castle, look at me." She says in a soft voice after turning him to look at her, moving her hand off his forearm and onto his jaw, caressing his cheek with a soft stroke of her thumb before trying to earn his eyes by pressing against his jaw. "Castle?" His eyes finally flick about and he find her, his pupils dilated. "Hey," she struggles to smile for him.

She can feel him let out a trembling breath against her wrist, feeling him lean into her as he loses his balance. "She..." he attempts, his voice frail and unsteady. "She's..." He tries again, this time making an honest effort to get the words out, but still fails.

"Castle," she says in a firm but loving tone, trying to get him to focus on her. But after a moment, she can tell he's losing himself to his thoughts again, his eyes becoming hazy and unfocused. "Rick, look at me." She says again, placing her hand back on his jaw. He's quicker to give her his eyes this time, and even quicker to really try and focus on her, clenching his jaw under her touch. He's worked dozens of murders with her, a lot of them difficult, a crucible for his emotional strength, but he's never shut down like this.

Rick meets her eyes, really looking into those big hazel eyes of her's and making the sight register in his mind. They seem to bat everything assaulting him away, act as a shield for his mind. "She can't be dead, I-I..." he trails off weakly, shaking his head against her touch and looking down to the ground. "I just talked to her yesterday."

She wishes more than anything right now he didn't have to know this feeling. It's a feeling that will come to haunt him. The very first stage of grief. The denial that the world just can't be like this. That the person you was just there a second ago just... isn't anymore. But even as Kate is struggling to keep Rick focused, Kate casts a glance over to his neighbors and sees the husband on the floor of their entryway, his wife curled up in a ball visibly sobbing and shaking in her husband's lap.

The officers closing the doors to their patrol cars startles Rick out of his daze. They both look over to the car as the tail lights come on and Kate grabs onto his hand, leading him back across the street toward his lake house, where Alexis is waiting a few feet away from the steps with Sasha by her side, Sasha's ears perked up and her eyes seemingly fixed on her master. Kate hears Sasha whimper before the dog quickly jogs up to Rick and starts to softly assault him.

Rick lets out a hard breath and reaches down, putting his hands in the fur of Sasha's neck and letting her lick his face as Kate and Alexis gather around him.

"Rick?" Kate starts again, reaching down and soothing her hand over his back as he bends down to let Sasha comfort him.

He lets out another hard breath over straining lungs and stands up, trying his best to marshall all his strength. "I have to go." He points out to everyone, but mostly himself. "Alexis, can you go get my keys, please?"

"Yeah," the girl says quick and darts back up the porch steps and into the house.

Kate reaches back over and puts a hand on his chest, using her other hand to take his hand as he reaches up to grasp the back of his neck. "Will you be alright?" She asks, knowing how it feels for ignorant do-gooders to ask if they are alright in that moment.

Rick tries to fill his lungs, but doesn't get much past a short gasp. "I-I... I don't know, I can't..." he attempts to explain to her. He just... doesn't know what he's feeling right now. "I just have to go. I can't just sit here, I-"

"Hey," Kate jumps in, seeing the signs. The restlessness, the panic. She reaches over and pets his chest again, pulling him back to her and trying for his attention as he turns to dart into the house after Alexis. "I know what you're feeling right now and the best thing you can do..." she trails off, lifting her brow and looking into his eyes, pausing until he looks back, "is stay focused as best you can... and go do what you do best."

He lets out a shaky breath as he leans into her touch again. "Kate, I don't know if I can do this."

"Yes, you can." She answers quickly.

"No, I-I..." he starts, shuffling into her touch, "I need you with me. I can't do this on my own." Rick pleads.

"_Yes_... you can, Castle." She says pointedly, never looking away from his eyes. "You just don't feel like you can right now, and I understand. But you can." She says, seeing him start to relax, the panic starting to slowly lift off his system the longer he looks into her eyes. "I know what you're going through but right now," she says, reaching up and cupping his jaw again, turning him to look over to his neighbors across the street, where Cecelia is still sobbing hopelessly into Greg's lap, "they need you to be okay."

Seeing Cecelia sob uncontrollably, even being able to hear her from across the street, Rick can feel his heart beat again, starting to slow and steady itself as he feels his unsure strength return, and nods before reaching over and taking Kate's hand. "Come with me."

That sends her heart palpitating, fear chomping down on her like a set of jaws. "No, I can't, Rick." She says with a shake of her head, but taking his hand nonetheless.

"Kate, you're probably the best detective on this side of the country. I don't know if I can do this without you." He says in a steady voice, reaching for her other hand that had fallen off his jaw.

Kate can feel fear start to overwhelm her, the emotional tide of the conversation taking a drastic turn against her. She wishes he could have some semblance of an idea as to just why she can't work with him on this. Even going to the scene of the first murder in town was a gigantic risk. She just got him back. As he grabs for her other hand, tugging her into him, she goes willingly and drifts into him, her eyes catching sight of his lips. "You can, Castle." She says, feeling his breath.

He pushes out a hard sigh as they seem to drift apart, letting the moment pass without taking advantage of it. He knows he has to do something. Even now, his body is still compelling him to act, even foolishly if he has to. He can tell there's something she's not telling him. Part of it is his suspicion, his new found paranoia of getting his heart stomped on again that taking her back has brought him. But she's said as much that there's something she did that she can't tell him.

And she begged him not to dig into it.

But he nods anyway, brushing his thumb over her knuckles. "I can..." she starts again, craning her neck to try and catch his eyes again, "stick around if you want. Wait for you here," she suggests, her heart starting to swell at the thought of them getting to unwind in bed together again, "we could spend the night together."

He swallows thickly but doesn't look up to her. "I'll let you know, okay?" He says, finally looking up to her sadly just as Alexis comes darting back out of the house and down the steps.

They both look over and let their hands fall from each other's grasp. "I grabbed your phone too." Alexis says and hands Rick his things.

"Thanks, sweetie." He says and leans over, giving his daughter a quick kiss on her cheek before heading toward his Lexus.

Rick flings open the driver-side door, but turns around to look over to them. After Kate gives him a heavy smile and an encouraging nod, he falls down inside and drives off.

* * *

His foot eases onto the brake when he turns the corner onto her street and he sees the quaint suburban homes lit up with the flashing red and blue from the police patrol cars parked a few houses ahead of him. Feeling numb, he pulls to a stop behind the closest patrol car and unfastens his seatbelt, letting it pull itself up his chest. He pauses to watch a few uniforms walk into the house, followed by a few Sherrif's deputies.

His eyes flick over and see the emblem of the Sherrif's department emblem on the doors of one of the patrol cars on the other side of the blockade.

He can't even find the strength to get up out of the car. It feels... feels like a dream that he just realized is a dream, but has to see it through until he wakes up to judge whether it was a nightmare or not. He just as to go along with whatever is thrown at him and let himself act in whatever way his dreaming self acts. When his eyes flick up to the visor, his mind travels back to the first lines he wrote about her, of Beckett.

_It was always the same for her as she arrived to meet the body. _

He wrote Nikki Heat with what he thought was strength in the face of killers, the kind of strength he saw in Kate. But as he just sits in his car, knowing an entire police department is waiting for him inside that house, maybe it wasn't strength that he wrote, but just... numbness.

Rick swallows thickly, getting dizzy as he shakes his head to brush away the thoughts, and flicks at the door handle, shoving the door open with his knee, and climbs out. His stomach twists into knots as he starts toward her house, his breath getting shorter and shorter with every stop along the sidewalk. He feels a few sets of eyes on him when he makes it to the concrete walkway leading up to her door. His eyes travel into the living room off to the left and part of him is thankful that all he sees is darkness.

Before he realizes it, his feet are climbing up the single stone step and it assaults his chest with a tight feeling, like he just got shot. He just expects her to be at the door waiting for him in that red dress she wore that night, holding her cat out in front of her so she didn't get cat hair on it. His heart quivers in his throat when he takes the last step up and into her house, seeing police scattered around the house, a few patrolmen standing around her table in the room to the right. The next thing his eyes find is the vase that sits in the middle of the table, holding those pink and red flowers he gave to her that night.

He still remembers how she was wrestling with her Siamese when he opened the door, how happy she was when he gave her the flowers.

"Castle!" A booming voice sounds from the other room.

Rick visibly jumps from the doorway just as a very large hand is grasping his shoulder. He loses his balance for a moment as his eyes find the giant statue of Crestfield's police chief, a giant of a man without the gentleness that usually comes along with men his size. Rick makes it a point to himself to focus his eyes on Chief and Chief alone until he absolutely has to. "Yeah, I'm..." he tries, giving Chief a nod, "I'm here."

When Rick looks up again, Chief looks hurt, sad. But he can tell that he's putting on a strong, confident front for his men. Chief gives Rick a short nod and digs his fingers into Rick's shoulder for a second. "Thanks for coming, Castle."

"Yeah," Rick mutters and looks away, down to the floor.

"This ain't easy on any of us, but I know you two were close." Chief says in a low voice, trying for an understanding tone.

Rick nods and flicks his eyes up to Chief briefly before looking back down to the floor, unwilling to let his eyes wander. "We were friends, yeah." Rick feels his shoulder being shaken, the sort of gesture a big brother would offer his little brother. "Chief," Rick starts, looking back up to him just as Chief is crossing his enormous arms over his chest, "why is the Sherrif's department her. Sierra didn't live over district lines."

Chief nods, "Well, Castle, two murders in less than two weeks is a first for the history of this town. We need all hands on deck for this. Medical examiner from the next county over is doing is stuff now and I already got my boys doing a canvas of the area." Rick nods, still not letting his eyes wander. He always lets his eyes wander around a scene, letting himself paint a scene of the story, speculates. But here, he doesn't even want to face reality let alone speculate about it. "So what do you think, you ready?"

Rick hardens himself, sucking in a long breath as silently as he can, rolls his shoulders back, looks straight ahead, and gives Chief a confident nod. "Where is she?"

Chief steps aside and his eyes immediately find her... laying on the floor of her living room. His heart breaks apart in his throat, falling into the pit of his stomach. She's dressed in teal scrubs and pink socks. Her eyes are wide open and facing the ceiling, her mouth is slightly ajar and her lips are so pale and looks so cold. The next thing that he notices is the dark impression running around her neck.

As he shuffles into the living room and toward Sierra, the very next thing he notices is her posture, going unnoticed to everyone else in the room, even the medical examiner who's knelt down next to her with his clipboard, looking absentminded as he takes notes. The world falls away when the thoughts start haunting him, possessing him.

Rick sloshes around and looks to the officers wandering around her house. "Did anyone move her?" He shouts to everyone.

Every officer stops and looks over to him. "Uh..." a deputy starts.

"I need to know if anyone moved her body!" Rick shouts again.

"Castle!" Chief says, getting his attention with a large hand on his shoulder. "No one moved anything, man. I made sure of it." Rick pushes out a trembling breath, running a hand over his face as he slowly turns around, planting another hand on his hip. "Why, what is it?"

Rick looks over to her body and feels his heart break to pieces again before a twinge of absolute hatred sparks in the pit of his stomach where the pieces of his heart sit. His hand wrenches the fabric of his shirt before punching the ground, his teeth gnashing. "Chief," Rick starts, turning around to find the Chief giving him a confused, but concentrated look, "I need you to get in touch with the Twelfth precinct of the NYPD and ask them for a case file."

"Wait, Castle, what-"

"Drop my name, if you have to. But you need to get me this file." Rick demands.

Chief turns and faces Rick fully, standing directly in front of him, his voice booming. "Castle, I didn't call you here to play twenty questions while the body of a woman I've known her _whole _life is lying on the floor, understand?! Get to the point!"

Rick feels his fight come into him as he takes a step up to Chief. "She's posed, chief!" He shouts, pointing back toward Sierra. As all eyes go to the body, Rick keeps his eyes on the Chief. "Laid out, her hands over her chest after being strangled." He says over the thick silence that has fallen over the room.

"Oh..." Chief starts, looking between Sierra and him, "okay. So why do I need to call up a precinct on the other side of the country?"

"Because Ms. Carlson was posed the same way." Rick points out. "And I'm willing to bet that he broke her neck when he was trying to strangle her the same way he strangled Sierra."

"Uhh..." A voice starts up from behind him. Rick looks over his shoulder to the ME, who's looking over his glasses to the pair of men. "I've reviewed the notes from the previous murder, Mr. Castle, and there's a clear difference here." He says, motioning to the body in front of him.

"What's that?" Chief asks from behind Rick.

"Well," the ME says, looking back to his notes, "for starters, this murderer used rope." He says, looking back up to the men. "From the looks of it, with twisted rope... maybe three quarters of an inch thick, probably nylon." Ricks heartbreak mixes violently with his almost seething anger. The ME shrugs his shoulders. "Ms. Carlson had her neck snapped."

Rick nods in a small motion. "Yeah, well, it wouldn't be the first time things didn't go to plan for him." He mutters to himself.

"Castle," Chief starts again, taking a step over and stopping in front of him, "enough with the riddles. You're acting like you know the guy already."

"I do, Sir." Castle says, his anger finally winning over his pain. "Two women, both blonde, both strangled with a heavy duty rope, posed to make them look peaceful... I wrote a book on the son of a bitch that did this, Chief."

"Then save me the trouble and spoil the ending for me, Castle." Chief says in a low growl.

"Jerry Tyson."

Chief blinks at him, raising his brow.

"You may know him as 3XK, or the Triple Killer." Rick's anger flares like a flashbang grenade in his system in that moment.

"_Three-_X-K, three implies we have three victims, Castle. We only have two here."

Rick is already nodding ahead of him. "And believe me, I'd like to keep it that way." He says, earning a stoic look from Chief, a look that brings determination to the air. "Let me go get some things from home and I'll meet you back at the station."

Rick doesn't wait for an argument and simply turns around and heads out the door, marching angrily down the walkway to head back to his car. His eyes find Andrew off to the right, carrying a small animal carrier in his hand. He can tell the animal inside is putting up a hell of a fight by the way the carrier is swaying back and forth, almost violently. He watches as Andrew turns the carrier to look inside and is quickly met with a very swift scratch across his nose, only knicking him. "Ah!"

As Andrew is quickly putting the pet carrier down onto the trunk of his patrol car, padding the tip of his nose and checking his fingers to check for blood, Rick can see inside the carrier to the large green eyes of Sierra's Siamese and can even hear him growl from inside. Persius was his name. Sierra loved him.

"Hey," Rick calls as he approaches Andrew just as he's angrily shaking his head at the pet carrier, "what's going on?"

"Ah," Andrew starts and leans against the back of his patrol car, "Chief told me to take this thing to the shelter. I swear, it wants to kill everything that comes near it. Andy got it worse just trying to get the damn thing in the cage."

"The shelter, but... the closest animal shelter is a kill shelter."

As Andrew shrugs his shoulders, Rick looks inside the carrier and sees Persius eye him back. Once he sees him, his heart tells him.

* * *

Rick falls into the driver side and closes the door behind him on a very hard, unsure sigh.

After a moment, he looks over to the pet carrier sitting on the passenger seat. He smiles a sad smile before slowly reaching over, seeing Sierra's Siamese come up to test his fingers as he unlatches the carrier door. When the door falls open, the cat freezes as Rick holds his hand out, letting him sniff it for a moment. When Persius looks up to him with a pair of eyes that's ready for him to make the wrong move, Rick smiles softly and waits.

"It's okay," he says softly, curling his finger out to gently pet the side of the cat's jaw in a cautious motion. "It's gonna be fine."

After a few motions of his finger, Persius nudges his head into Rick's hand, making Rick smile sadly.

"Eventually."

* * *

_A/N: Fully intended to insert the next scene, but it was running way too long. Let me know what you think. I really hope that the wait won't be as bad for the next chapter. But let me know about this chapter? If any of you are wanting to check out because of this chapter, I can only say to you what I said to those who wanted to check out because they didn't see any way for Rick and Kate to get back together... just stick it out. /=]_


	38. Chapter 38

_Jamison felt her tap against his thigh with her fingers. He doesn't want to look away, knowing these are her last moments. But when he looked down to his leg, he saw she had drawn a heart on the inside of his pant leg in blood. His heart broke in that instant, knowing it will never be repaired. He only ever got to have her body. But only now, in her last moments, does he have her heart._

_Jamie looks back up to her, a painful smile pushing onto his face. "I love you too, Nikki." He said, cupping her cheek again._

_A tear fell from her eye and she smiled._

_She convulsed in his arms once more before her eyes drifted shut and when her body goes limp, Rook feels her hand lay limply onto his leg._

Rick grits his teeth, pausing before he flicks his eyes to the last line on the screen of his laptop.

_And in that moment, he knew she was gone._

With a short, hard sigh pushed out in a huff, he looks away, shoving his laptop away from him in a fruitless effort when the rubber stops on the bottom keep it from moving more than half an inch. He turns away and rolls himself away from his desk, petting Persius's neck and back in a slow, gentle motion back and forth. He looks down to the cat, sitting in his lap and sleeping soundly, his arms opened and draped around him. Rick smiles sadly and strokes his hand down his back.

He looks back up to his laptop for a moment, where he has the entire section highlighted, his finger dangling above the backspace button to erase it forever. It wasn't the ending he ever planned for the book, it wasn't an ending he ever planned for the character, it wasn't the ending he ever planned for the story as a whole. Like so many writers before him, it would be changing and altering the fundamental and defining traits of his characters just to tell a story nobody wanted to hear, instead of doing what he was taught, and just developing characters and letting them tell the story.

He was angry, furious. He wanted to erase her from his life. He wanted her gone. He was tired of constantly being at war with some part of himself, constantly being at war with other people and their expectations. And it wasn't because he was over her, not in any sense of the phrase. As he takes up the picture in his hands that lies face down next to his laptop, he reads the words she'd written in her elegant handwriting, _Always, My Love. _

After another deep sigh, feeling his lungs strain a bit, he flips the picture over but doesn't look at the two people pictured just yet. They were never at the point when they could be that loving and that affectionate with each other. They'd whispered sweet-nothings and adoring compliments to each other in bed, but never anything like what she wrote. They never got to the pre-wedding honeymoon phase.

He swallows and runs his fingers down Persius's head and looks at the picture, feeling everything inside him tighten just as it used to when something reminded him of her before she showed up here. And as he lets the two beautiful people, illuminating happiness with their smiles and her eyes, he looks back over to his laptop. He was never over her. He never stopped thinking about her. He never even thought ill of her, was never poisoned to think any less of her, admire her any less. If anything, everything that she did just made him miss the her that he let slip away while he was distracted by trying to keep her around.

He breathes another hard breath and sets the picture back down, his fingers falling lightly onto her face as he continues to stroke Persius.

When he hears a creak of the stairs from down the hall, Rick turns his chair around by pushing against the side of his desk with his foot while Sasha perks her head up off the loveseat adjacent to his desk at the sound. His heart skips when he sees the laptop still open to what he wrote and reaches over to simply pull it closed.

Kate is heading up the stairs after catching Alexis by the door and being pointed up. He never called her back last night. She ran back out to check on the store briefly, get a change of clothes, but nothing ever came of his open ended offer to have her spend the night with him again. Now, she's tired and worried about him, about them and where they stand now. She's terrified that something happened or that he thought up some reason to think yesterday was all a mistake. It's making her feel sick with how selfish the thought is. Someone close to him lost their life, was murdered.

But nonetheless, Kate makes it to the top of the stairs and goes to the door to the right at the end of the hall that's cracked open slightly, pushing it open with her shoulder. She peaks her head inside just in time to see him glance over his shoulder for a quick second and then start to get up from his chair. She freezes momentarily as the door falls open and leaves her standing in the doorway with two cups of coffee. Sasha whimpers softly and jumps off the loveseat behind him just as Rick is making his way around his chair and over to her in just a few steps.

Her eyes lock with his when he takes the few steps to close the distance between them. "Hey," he greets her softly and reaches for her with a hand on her waist.

Kate can't help but let a happy smile engulf her features as he gently yanks her into him and finds her lips with just as much ease as he used to, kissing her firmly, lovingly, chastely, but also letting his lips linger on her's for a few seconds before leaning back and taking the cup from her hand.

She feels herself smile brightly, knowing that he settled her doubts and fear with one simple action and set the record straight for her. Nothing has changed from where they were on his couch yesterday. As Rick smiles tiredly yet gratefully, he turns back around to pace through his office just as Sasha is stretching herself out in front of her. "Hey," she finally says back.

Rick turns and lets himself fall back into one side of the loveseat that Sasha just got up from, holding the coffee in his lap.

Kate hesitates to follow him after scratching Sasha behind the ears for a moment, but heads over when she notices how tired and worn his features look. "You look exhausted." She points out as she passes his chair.

"_Mmmmm..._" A low growl comes from his chair.

Kate turns quickly, taking a step away from his chair and looks down, seeing a dark brown, skinny Siamese sitting in the seat, looking up at her with blackened out eyes and a violently flicking tail. "Uh..." Kate starts, looking back over to Rick.

Rick lifts his head, waving at the cat before brushing his unruly unkempt hair back. "That's uh..." he says, sounding tired, "that's Sierra's cat."

Kate maneuvers around it and comes over to the loveseat to sit down next to him, not smashed into his side as she would like but not having the distance of the loveseat between them either. "Oh?" She encourages him.

He takes a long sip of his coffee and sucks his teeth. "Yeah," he says, looking over to the cat. "The local shelter is a kill shelter so..." he shakes his head, looking down to Sasha who just sat down on the floor in the space between their legs, "I took him in until one of her family members came for him. Maybe... maybe Greg and Cecelia want him or... or her parents."

Kate nods, her eyes never leaving him. He looks... hurt. "So, what happened?"

She can see the color drain from his features. "She was strangled." He mutters as he lets Sasha prod at his hand with her snout. Kate waits for him patiently. "With a rope, blue nylon from the fibers they found, the ME thinks from the front, sometime between eight and ten o'clock the night before last. No sign of a clear break-in, no witnesses, no fingerprints... no motive." He says with a dragging voice.

Kate's heart feels heavy. Beth and Barbara were broken up about it when she went into the coffee shop. They didn't hound her for questions, they just looked distraught. "I'm sorry," she says, weaving her fingers through his and taking his hand.

Rick looks down to her taking his hand and grasps her fingers, petting her skin with his thumb. "We already cleared the usual suspects..." he rattles off, needing to get it out, "her ex-husband is living outside Seattle and was working night, and the last person to see her was the receptionist at the morgue and she said that nothing seemed off a-and..." he shakingly trails off, looking away from their joined hands, "my wild imagination isn't really getting the police anywhere." He says to her, mincing words to say his Tyson theory isn't holding up.

No one has heard of him or seen him, so there's seemingly no trace of him. Which is usually a sign that he would be here. But Chief wouldn't buy it. But Kate smiles to herself, lifting his hand off the cushion and letting it fall back down. "Well, your wild imagination has worked wonders before, Castle." Rick chuckles under his breath, managing a smile. "It's one of the things I love most about you."

Rick's eyes find the picture that sits on his desk. "Kind of amazing considering how much trouble it's gotten us into before."

Kate smiles, "That's where that courageous heart of yours came in, Castle." She says softly, leaning into his shoulder.

Rick grins heavily, "It wasn't so much courage as it was not wanting to know how mad you'd get if didn't get you out of whatever situation I got you into in the first place."

"You're a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for." She says, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. "And besides," she starts again slyly, "your imagination never exactly stopped at the murder board."

Rick looks over to her, "I believe that was _your _imagination at work, Ms. Beckett."

Kate smiles brightly, her teeth grasping her tongue as her heart flutters. As they chuckle with each other, sharing the moment, Kate lets her head fall onto his shoulder as she leans into him, letting her eyes fall shut when she feels him lay his head down onto hers. "You know," she starts in a soft voice, "I was worried that Sierra getting murdered would change things with us."

Once the words are out, she wishes she could take them back.

When he sighs, she's letting her head fall down his shoulder, almost in shame. "I'm sorry, that was really selfish of me."

"No," he says assuredly, "no, I get it. Don't worry." He brushes his thumb across the back of her hand, acting in the moment and lifting his head up and putting his lips to her hair. Kate readjust herself against his shoulder, relaxing at his acceptance. "And for what it's worth, nothing has changed."

Kate pauses before lifting her head off his shoulder to look into his eyes, seeing a sort of tired, loving gaze. "Really?"

He shakes his head. "I know things might be tough until I can get this case solved and Sierra's murderer behind bars, but that doesn't mean I want anything different than what I wanted yesterday." He says, his voice holding that soft, loving, confident tone he used when she had doubts about them, used to reassure her that they belonged together.

Kate blinks up at him. "And..." she starts, looking down to his lips briefly, "what is it that you want?"

Rick stares at her for a moment before leaning in, brushing his nose against her's for a moment, electrifying the air between them before stealing her lips in a quick, passionate kiss, tempered by desperation and needing comfort after yesterday. The kiss breaks with a soft pluck, Kate licks her lips in a quick motion, and she gazes up at him. "Right now, you're giving me all I need."

Kate smiles at him and lets her head fall back down to his shoulder. "You know, Rick," she says as he lets his head rest back down onto her's just as his phone vibrates in his pocket, "for what it's worth, I know what you saw in Sierra."

Rick looks down to her just as she's closing her eyes, digging out his phone from his other pocket. "What do you mean?"

Kate snuggles herself into his shoulder as he unlocks his phone to read the text message from Chief. "She is pretty easy to talk to." As Rick reads the beginning of the text message, his heart stops before he scrolls down, seeing the picture of the yellow and blue nylon rope sitting on the lid of a trashcan. "She was honest and... and she cared."

"Kate?" He asks, his eyes locked onto his phone before Kate lifts her head off his shoulder to look up at him. "I didn't know you knew Sierra." He states, looking over to her.

Kate shrugs and sits up. "Yeah, she came by the shop to talk to me the..." she trails off, "the night before last... just as the shop was closing."

Rick sits up in the loveseat, looking over to her. "The shop closes at... what, seven?"

"Seven-thirty."

Rick looks down to his phone again, at the picture of the nylon rope. "And what did you talk about?"

Kate lets go of his head and adjusts herself a few inches away from him, eyeing him with a furrowing brow. "What's going on?" She asks in an unquestioning tone.

_Call me ASAP when you get this. Deputies are already on the way. _He rereads the text. "Kate..." he struggles, looking over to her and still seeing her furrowing brow, "please tell me you have an alibi from eight to ten o'clock the night before last."

* * *

_A/N: Now that the story is starting to pick up pace, I'm really going to try for more frequent updates. It may mean the chapters are a tiny bit shorter than the last few have been, but the pace needs to kind of remain intact for the full effect of the story. As always, let me know what you think. _

_A/N2: For full context, go back to the beginning of chapter 14 to read all of what Rick had written on his laptop. _


	39. Chapter 39

Kate eyes him with a hard glare before slowly standing up, never looking away from him as he shifts on the loveseat. "Why would you ask me that?" She demands in a low, hushed tone.

"Beckett," he starts and stands up after her, holding his phone, "_please _tell me you have an alibi for the night before Tuesday night." He says, worry quaking in his features as he steps toward her.

But Kate backs away from his approach, putting her hand out. "_Why _do I need an alibi, Rick?" She demands, her heart starting to race. "What did they tell you?" She asks back, thinking the worst as she turns around to get distance from him and his accusations, putting her hands on the back of her waist and pacing angrily around to the other side of his desk.

The color from his face drains as he steps forward, his desk separating them, and hands her his phone. She takes it after meeting his eyes with a hard, impatient glare. The same kind of glare she'd give him when she wasn't thinking of how he was feeling or how much their relationship meant to either of them. She's just angry at him. When she takes his phone and looks at the picture in the text.

"Blue and yellow nylon." She points out, her throat closing over her breath.

Rick feel his heart fall, motioning toward her with a heavy hand. "They found it in your trashcan."

Kate clenches her jaw, eyeing the phone, "And they don't need a warrant to search a trashcan." Kate doesn't look up to acknowledge him, instead swipes her thumb up his phone slowly to continue the text message. "Deputies are on the way."

Rick forces out a shaky breath and shrugs his shoulders, still not earning her eyes back. "And I don't know how much time we have."

She lets the phone fall down to her side and looks away from him for a moment, and old feeling starting to creep over her. Like an old, comfortable suit of armor. One she thought she had no use for, and one she doesn't want to have on. Because when she puts on that armor to keep things away so she can do her job, she keeps him away also.

She tosses the phone down onto his desk with a clatter and turns to face him, shrugging her shoulders. "How'd I even become a suspect anyway?" She asks, letting a little more emotion seep into her voice.

"I don't know," he answers honestly. "When I left the station last night, they were pulling anyone who sells three quarter inch triple twist blue and yellow nylon rope in the area."

Kate eyes him emotionally, her expression straining as she tries harder and harder to hold onto her stoicism. "We sell it at the shop."

He can only look at her, feeling helpless. After a moment of them staring at each other in a thick silence, Rick looks away and down to the floor. "Well, it's circumstantial, anyway. I-I mean, they can't prove that you used it. Someone could have-"

"Rick," she stops him in a soft, firm voice. When he looks over, she feels her heart crack. "We're the only ones that sell nylon rope that thick nearby. It's used to tie boats off." She tells him, letting her hands fall off her waist. She wants so badly to be held right now, because she feels it coming. "I run the register at the shop during the day so that rope is going to have my prints on it."

"Kate, that doesn't mean-"

"Yes, it does, Rick." She rebuts him before he can argue. As she moves back around the desk, he turns to meet her. "We've put away people on less." She says as she stops in front of him. "And I don't have an alibi for the time of the murder, and in a town this small, they already know about us and someone is bound to find the timing of us getting back together to be very suspicious."

"Kate, you're talking like you're way to the sentencing." He argues, his expression finally breaking away from the arched brow and emotional eyes. "We need to fight this. We've gotten through this before."

"Yes," she starts emotionally, taking the last step into him and places her hands on his chest, "and before, I made the mistake of investigating it without you until I I had no choice but to let them take you in and let myself doubt you by what I found, thinking that you'd cheated on me." Rick clenches his jaw and pulls at her by her hips. "And I'm not going to let you make the same mistake." She says, her voice hushed and quiet, just above a whisper.

He pinches his brow and eyes her worriedly. "What are you talking about?"

She has to tell him, and tell him everything. If her name is sent through the system, it's going to pop up on someone's screen at the AG's office. He has to hear the truth from her first. She feels a hot tear leak out of her eye as she looks up to him. "I love you," She tells him in a whisper and places her fingers over his lips. He blinks at her curiously before she reaches up and places a finger of her own lips, gesturing for him to keep quiet.

Kate slips from his grasp quickly and moves around his desk, taking his letter opener from his desk that sits next to the cup holding his pens, taking his phone with the other hand. She jabs the letter opener into the side casing of his phone and forces open the back. Rick tries to interject, "Kate, wha-"

He's silenced by a hard, intense look she shoots him as she removes the battery from his phone, tossing the battery and phone behind her and to the other side of the room. She then takes her own phone out from her pocket and does the same, moving around his desk and to toss her phone off to the other side of his office, then turning around and taking his laptop.

"Wha..." he trails off as she flips his laptop over and removes the battery. Once she takes his laptop apart, she turns around with burning eyes and he takes it as a cue that the silence can be broken. "What are you doing?" He asks quickly.

"Making sure they aren't listening." She rushes before stepping up to him again. "Rick, if they ran my name through the system, someone somewhere was notified, and I can't know what they're going to tell the Crestfield police about me. And just like when Ryan and Esposito showed me those emails Tyson wrote, you're going to form conclusions that aren't true unless you hear the truth from me first."

"Kate, they don't even know you."

"I don't _care _what they think of me, Rick." She exclaims, looking up to him emotionally. "I care about what you think of me." She says, putting her hands on his sides and pulling him in. "And I can't expect you to not believe them when I'm holding the truth from you."

"Then..." Rick starts, frozen in place as he looks into her eyes, "what are you talking about?"

Kate pinches her lips together and feels her heart clench. "In mid January, my partner and I were assigned to a task force to route out a terror cell operating somewhere inside of DC. Everything was going normally when my partner got a lead that one of the suspects from the cell named Hasan Abdalla had been spotted going into a warehouse, so I pulled the security footage from the warehouse to see if he was meeting anyone."

Rick is just listening intently, an emotionally curious expression pulling at his features. "It usually took you a day or two to get the court orders for security footage unless it's from a federal building." He points out.

But Kate clicks her jaw and feels part of her heart sink. "We were allowed to cut a lot of corners and use a lot of methods under the purview of stopping terrorism." She says in a hushed tone. "When I pulled the footage, I saw Abdalla gun down a woman in cold blood. I showed it to my partner and we went to the scene and there was a woman... medium height, short blonde hair on the ground with three gunshots to the chest. So we called it in, I combed the scene for a lead on Abdalla, and when the rest of the team arrived, my partner came up to me and told me... _explicitly... _to back off of Abdalla... and that we were going to follow other leads."

Rick nods, his eyes softening. "But you didn't." He says, knowing her. She upholds the law, gets victims justice, even if she's not allowed to.

Kate smiles sadly and shrugs. "It's why I became a cop." Rick smiles heavily and gives her an encouraging nod, silently telling her that he's proud of her, and would have backed her if he could have. But when she gets back to her tale, her heart falls again quickly. "So I went behind my partner's back and tracked down Abdalla to an apartment complex in Brentwood and when I found him... he turned... and he drew on me."

Rick brushes his thumbs over her hips, seeing a dark curtain of terror wash through her eyes. "And you shot him."

When she nods, she feels her eyes burn, and takes another step into him. "Rick, he was undercover."

His heart skips, finally understanding the gravity of what she's been through, and why she couldn't tell him.

"He was an Israeli intelligence agent on loan to the AG's office for the task force I was assigned to. The woman he shot wasn't even dead."

Rick's brow pinches. "But you said you found a body."

Kate lets out a trembling breath. "Castle, it was a setup. The woman I saw in the video was a junior agent working with Abdalla. The body I found was of a young girl who died of a drug overdose that the AG's office used to stage the murder. Abdalla's weapon was loaded with blanks."

Rick's breath hitches and he shakes his head. "But... but there was no way for you to know that, Kate. From what you saw-"

"Blanks..." she stops him, "don't have any recoil. I was shown the footage by the director, and the gun didn't have any recoil. And even if there was, it wouldn't have mattered.' She pleads, her eyes burning. "I was _ordered _not to pursue Abdalla by a direct superior and I didn't listen." She says desperately. "Rick, I should have been charged with treason and thrown in a federal prison for the rest of my life because of what I did." She can feel him grasp her hips tighter, as if afraid to lose her in that moment. "Getting fired and never being able to be a cop again is the best thing that could have happened."

Rick looks into her eyes, tugging at her hips while she pets his chest. He wanted to take it slow, he wanted to slowly rekindle what they had together, slowly work back up to being the amazing couple they were. But all it took for him to feel exactly the way he felt last year when she was about to get blown up in that apartment was something coming to take her away from him again. He looks over her features and feels the words at his throat. They used to flow so naturally.

Kate blinks hotly and forces a quick, sad smile. "I'm a lot of things, Castle." She mutters, looking away from him as she pets his chest. "I wasn't the best daughter to my parents. I'm... intense and critical and... stubborn and at times, I'd rather be in a gun fight than be honest with myself about my feelings. I was an awful girlfriend to the man I've loved the most in my entire life and I was so closed off that he believed I never loved him at all."

Rick lets out a silent but shaky breath, seeing her reddened eyes leak out a tear.

"But I'm _not _a murderer."

He looks down to her lips and gently tugs her forward into the cove of his arms kissing her passionately, her arms sandwiched between them as he weaves his arms around her. "Mmm..." she moans desperately, putting her hands into his hair and pulling him down to her to deepen the kiss. He holds her to him tightly as he turns his head to deepen the kiss even further, each of them taking as much of the other as they can in the single gesture. The kiss breaks as he's putting his hands on her waist and tugging her up into him, feeling her breath shake against his lips.

He feels her pet his hair back in a soothing motion, it's a motion that reminds him now of how close and connected they can be, how connected she wants them to be. He doesn't want to lose her now. "We'll get through this, Kate." He says softly. She sniffles and drapes her arms around his neck, leaning her forehead against his. "Besides, us running into trouble right as we get together isn't exactly something we've never been through before." He halfheartedly jokes.

She can feel his grin on her lips, and she musters up enough emotional energy to match it. "I hated it then too, Rick." She says and leans back, looking up to him. "I wanted the first night you stayed over to be more romantic."

Rick smirks and narrows his eyes. "Well, promise me this time if Ryan knocks on the door, we just pretend we're not home?"

She feels a smile break away her sunken heart and she lightly chuckles a few times and nods. "Deal."

Right then, they can we a car door close outside and they both feel thrust back into the dark, grim reality of the situation, the gravity of what's happening to them switching back on. Kate looks back up to him and hardens her expression, giving him a strong look that says she's ready for whatever is about to get thrown at her. Rick meets it with a simple solemn nod. Slowly, Kate steps back and unweaves her arms from around his neck, running her hands down his chest and feeling his hands move down from her waist to her hips, picking at the hem of her work shirt.

A loud, forceful knock on the door makes them jump and break eye contact. Kate takes one last hard sigh to try and fruitlessly cleanse her system of jittery nerves and turns, making for the door to his office when she feels him take her hand and stop her. When she turns, she sees him almost choking on words. "I..." he struggles, finding her big beautiful eyes, "I'll get you out of this." He says, and Kate can't help but feel her heart sink a bit. "I promise."

She smiles heavily and squeezes his hand, stroking his fingers with her thumb. "I know you will."

* * *

_A/N: Did you know a toothache heavily impairs your ability to sleep? Because I didn't. T~T_

_A/N2: as of twenty minutes after posting this chapter, I'm not getting notified of new reviews via email, which is how I normally read them, and fanfiction doesn't seem to be updating the review page with the new reviews posted. So if you have a question or are airing a concern of some kind, or just want to chat about where the story is going, it may be a while until this is fixed until I can respond. Thanks for the understanding! _


	40. Chapter 40

Rick's tires squeal to a stop in the parking lot of the police station, his car askew from the others in the lot. After catching himself on the seatbelt, he kicks the door open, his anger getting the better of him when he kicks too hard and it starts to bounce back on him as he's climbing out, and makes his way around his silver Lexus to heard toward the front door. He was right behind them, but the deputies ran a yellow light on their way and it was the morning traffic coming through town.

His heart beating like a scared rabbit that just had its young attacked, he yanks on the handle to the station and heads inside just as the two deputies are leading her across the station to a room in the far corner in handcuffs. His body feels squeezed when he sees her get led into the door that's being opened by one of the officers, with the deputies holding her by the arm. Even someone else touching her is infuriating him. He can't help envision himself going up to him and pulling the deputy's arm behind his back for even daring to lay a hand on her. The door gets closed behind her and he's forced to let the thought pass by a grit of his teeth and a bull-like huff of his nostrils.

His eyes then go over to where they have the whiteboard set up in the space just outside the Chief's office. The officers working the case are gathered around while the others are probably out on their regular beats. Andy, the shorter, portlier, curly-haired officer is standing off to the side with a hint of a grin on his face while his partner Andrew, the one who gave him the news about Sierra, is standing adjacent to him. Rick begins to stomp through the station, maneuvering around the desk as quickly as he can.

"So, the ME confirmed it then?" An investigator type asks dressed in a plain charcoal suit, standing at the whiteboard. "The shoe marks are a match for both scenes?"

"Uh, yep." Andy nods. "And we just got approval from Chief, they're searching her..." He trails off.

The first one to spot him is Andy, who seems to try and mask the fear coming into his features upon spotting Rick by rolling his shoulders back and taking a deep breath as he approaches. The other eyes quickly turn to find him, along with a middle-aged detective standing at the whiteboard with an uncapped marker in one hand. "Why wasn't I told?" He demands.

"Told what?" The detective asks him, sounding and looking uninterested.

Rick shifts his weight and leans forward imposingly. "You just arrested my girlfriend."

The detective turns to face him fully while capping the marker forcefully with a flair of arrogance. "Don't you think that's _why _you weren't told anything?"

Expecting the answer, Rick narrows his eyes. "I'm part of this investigation. If there's a development, I need to know about it." He demands.

"Why?" Andy speaks up from the side with his arms crossed over his stomach as he leans back. Rick looks over to him with anger furrowing in his brow. "So you could figure out a way to get her off?"

Rick just huffs again and gnashes his teeth before looking back over to the detective just as another man in a grey suit comes to join the scene from the other side of the station. "How'd she even become a suspect?"

The detective just cranes his head back and steps off to the side to go over the whiteboard. "We found out a few things about Dr. Baker's personal life." He starts, pointing at a list they've made below a picture of Sierra off to the left of the board. "And found out about the little love triangle you three had going on."

"_Love _tri- a love triangle?" Rick asks angrily.

"You two went out on a date recently, didn't you?" The other detective asks him as he comes to stand next to Rick.

Rick looks over and shakes his head. "Yeah, we went out for dinner _once _and nothing happened."

"Then why were you seen with her at the diner a few nights later?" Andy asks quickly after. Rick's eyes flick over to him angrily. "Staff said you were with her for hours, looking pretty serious."

Rick looks Andy in the eye before firing daggers at him. "We were talking. Me and Sierra are..." he cuts himself off, shaking his head after catching himself, "we were friends. That's the whole reason I'm working this case."

"Staff also said that your girlfriend came in and didn't seem too happy about seeing you two together." Andy continues, taking a step toward him. "In fact, they said she looked downright furious."

Rick's attention is eagle-eyed onto Andy in that moment, accepting the challenge. "If you have something to say to me, _say _it." He demands, taking a step into the circle that'd formed around the whiteboard as if declaring a duel in an arena.

Andy just uncrosses his arms and looks up to Rick, who's towering over him almost a foot. "You want to know what I think happened?" He asks the room. "I think," he continues and looks back up to Rick, "you played Sierra and got her interested in you, dragged her along for a fling," he continues before looking around to the other officers, "we all know your type. Then your girlfriend finds out about it. She wants you back because the money she got from you dried up, but your already dangling someone else along, so she follows her home, breaks into her house," Andy says, coming to stand directly in front of him, "and _murders _her in cold blood."

Rick's hands fly up and grab Andy by the collar, taking him and shoving him back into the row of file cabinets behind him with a hard motion. Rick leans over him as Andy's face drains of collar and he's left looking like a terrified child, his bravado abandoning him at the first sign of trouble as Rick leans in close with clenched teeth. "Kate Beckett... is _not... a murderer!" _He seethes as all the officers behind him spring into action.

Rick feels two sets of arms grab him and pull him back as the room erupts in chaos. "Come on, back off!" One officer grabbing him grunts as he pulls Rick back. As Andy is slowly slinking down and off the file cabinet, Rick throws off the officer's hold while none of them notice that the Chief's door had already burst open. "The _hell _is going on out here?!" Chief's voice booms through the station.

Rick eyes him as he's shaking his shirt out while Andrew, Andy's partner is stepping up to his boss to try and explain. "Sir, Castle and Andy got-"

"Ah-" Chief cuts him off with a harsh wave of his hand. "_Damn _it, _get _in here, Castle!" Chief yells and points into his office. Rick huffs again and strides through the group while Chief points back to the group of officers. "Detectives, interrogation, go! The rest of you, separate corners, _now!_"

Rick storms around Chief and into his office just as Chief is yanking the door to his office shut forcefully, making the blinks knock against the window. Rick turns around and waves his arm out. "What the hell is that guy's problem?" He asks quickly.

"What's _your _problem, Castle?" Chief barks back, stepping up to him and pointing a finger at him. "I like you, but you can't go assaulting my officers." He says in a very loud tone before taking a step up to Castle. "You're damn lucky your on in an official capacity, Castle, because you don't want to be a civilian assaulting one of my officers, understand?" He warns in a low voice.

"Chief, Andy has an ax to grind with me and my girlfriend is getting caught in the crossfire." Rick argues.

Chief barks out a chuckle and plants his large hands on his hips. "Of _course, _he has an ax to grind with you, Castle. He has it in his head that you and Sierra slept together!"

Rick's angry and impatience comes to a head with that and he snaps. "For God's sake, I never slept with Sierra!" He yells, tossing his arms out, absolutely sick of the accusation. "We went on _one _date, and I told her about Beckett _on _that date. All we've ever done is talk. I'll take a polygraph if I have to!"

"Castle, I've known Sierra her whole life." Chief starts with a slow shake of his head, speaking over him to get his attention. "She wouldn't sleep with _Fabio _after one date."

"Then what the hell is Andy out to get me for?!" Rick asks angrily.

"Andy's had a crush on Sierra since _kindergarten, _Castle! Boy's been after her his whole life. Crying out loud, he asked to be put on sick leave for a week after she got married." Rick just shakes his head, cranes his neck and paces away from him through the Chief's office. "But don't get angry at him just because the trial he sent us on is actually leading somewhere."

Rick turns around and eyes him. "What about Tyson? He's behind this, Chief, I just need more time to prove it."

"Castle, until your serial killer shows up to confess to these murders," Chief starts as he steps up to Rick, "the evidence is pointing to the woman sitting in our interrogation room."

"The rope isn't enough to pin her for murder, Chief, and you know it." He argues.

"I agree and that's why," Chief continues and moves across his office to his desk, "I asked those detectives the mayor had me bring in to look into her financials." He says, grabbing a paper off his desk, reaching it over to him. "Look at the most recent purchases."

_Black hiking boots, a box of blue nitrile gloves, forty dollars in clothes, and twenty dollars from Crestfield bait and tackle for a spool of blue and yellow nylon triple twist rope, _he reads in his head. Rick looks over the older purchases and shakes his head before looking back up at Chief, who's already holding another paper in his hand. "Chief, this is her credit card that still has her listed in Washington DC. The latest purchase besides these was for the Motel Six at the edge of town two months ago. Besides that, Kate Beckett has been a homicide detective for over ten years, she'd know better than to buy the murder weapon with her own credit card from store that she owns." He continues and slides the paper back onto his desk.

"It's not only that, kid." Chief says while reading the paper in his hand. Rick waits him out. "Last night, when we ran her name through the system... well, I'd never seen a larger classified label since I watched that bootleg documentary on Roswell." He halfheartedly jokes. "But after a few calls, we were sent this and it has more black bars than the massage listings of a Vegas newspaper."

Chief hands Rick the paper and he quickly begins to skim it. Whatever they redacted, it was probably done on purpose to make what they didn't sound that much more incriminating. Armed federal agent, against orders of superior and lead Director, shot and killed unarmed civilian, it's all here. "Chief," Rick says, looking at the paper, "speaking as a writer, I'll tell you that whatever's not here probably tells more of a story than what is." He concludes and tosses the paper back down to the desk.

"Okay, then tell me about this 'love triangle' nonsense." Chief says, using a set of air quotes.

Rick rolls his eyes and decides to just tell him the truth. "Beckett and I went through a pretty bad break up about a year ago."

Chief grins and reaches for something else on his desk before lifting up that stupid tabloid news article. That must've been where Andy got all his facts from. "Yeah, ain't exactly a secret, Castle." He says before tossing the tabloid back down.

"Beckett came back after she was let go from her job and said she wanted to work things out and I had just met Sierra while I was out running. Beckett started coming by every morning to work things out."

"So the reports from Sierra's sister across the street about you and her constantly yelling at each other every morning?" Chief asks.

Rick plants his hands on his hips and looks off to the side for a moment. "Do I have to go into every detail about our break up? Because it's going to about nine months if I do." Chief just raises his one brow and crosses his overly large arms. Rick grits his teeth and lids his gaze. "Yes, we argued... a lot. I asked Sierra out to dinner a few weeks ago, where I told her about Beckett and she was fine with it."

Chief stares at him, almost as if waiting for a real answer, raising the other side of his brow after a moment. "And?"

Rick double-takes, "And what? We talked about it. That little incident," Rick gestures toward his desk, "at the diner where Beckett saw us was just her helping talk through some issues. That's all."

"And what about now? Am I supposed to believe that it's a coincidence that you two seem to be back together the day after Sierra is murdered?" Chief asks in a dark, demanding voice.

"Yes!" Rick hammers.

Chief just shakes his head, "Whatever you say, the detectives are in interrogation with her now. They'll find out." He says and looks back down to his desk.

"Chief, that woman has spent more time in an interrogation room that most of your cops have been on the force. She used to work more homicides in a month that most officers do in their entire careers. And the only other person that probably has more experience in homicide in the tri-state area than her is me."

"I'm not sending you in there, Castle." Chief says sternly.

"Chief, if Beckett really did kill Sierra, the only person that can get the truth out of her is me!" Rick says back loudly. "In case you didn't know, I used to write _books _about that woman."

Chief leans back with his arms crossed and lets out a long, frustrated sigh.

* * *

The door just slammed behind them. They'd left after just a few minutes, frustrated and angry. She could tell that they hadn't had much experience in an actual interrogation. They were the kind of detectives that she'd expect to be paired off with who were just starting out. But none of it makes her feel any better, about the situation or about herself.

She doesn't know what they are telling him, but she can't expect him to stay totally loyal to her. Not after everything she put him through. They never worked through her losing her loyalty to them totally, so she's not going to be mad at him for questioning her now. But she loves him, she at least has faith in what they have together. Yesterday was enough to rejuvenate the faith she had in taking the plunge with him in the first place and hope that it could lead to some kind of happiness that most people can only ever read about.

After a long few seconds sitting in total silence, Kate under the collar of her army green work shirt and pulls out her necklace. She used to go for this necklace to remind her of her past, of why she was on the road she was and why she stayed on it. But now, as she grabs onto the engagement ring, feeling the diamonds press gently into her palm, she's reminded of her yearn for their future, what other struggles and hurdles they have to go through together and how much stronger they'll be for them, how in love they'll be after.

As the door starts to open again, Kate quickly puts the necklace back under her shirt and straightens up in her chair before looking over and seeing him step inside with the case file in his hands. Her heart flutters wildly when their eyes catch each other. He has a small hint of that shy, caring smile gracing his tired, ruggedly handsome face as he's pulling the door shut, but when he looks down to the floor and looks back up to make his way over to the table across from her, it's gone.

"Hi," she says in a whimper.

Rick slides the case file onto the table and pulls out the chair in one motion. "Are you okay?"

Her heart flutters around like a panicked butterfly this time when she hears that, enough to make her have to bite her bottom lip to pull back the smile. No accusing her of anything, no demanding answers, no demanding she apologizes, no demanding an explanation. Just wanting to know if she's okay. It was small things he did like that that seemed little at the time, but eventually made her fall as madly in love with him as she is now.

She nods as he pulls the chair up to the table. "I'm okay." She says with a soft smile. "This kind of used to be my forte, Castle."

Rick smiles just as softly and locks eyes with her, but it soon fades as his thoughts seem to escape his control. He shakes his head in a quick jolt of a motion and opens the file. "T-they um... they know that Sierra came to see you Monday night." Kate nods, the motion somewhat sad as the thought that she was the last to see her alive slithers into her mind. "Is there any way to prove that you didn't threaten her? Do you guys have cameras in the store?"

Kate nods, "Yeah, we just got a new system installed, the Ring system. Audiovisual with remote access so my dad and I can access it from our phones."

Rick gives her a small nod. "Are... you sure that only you and your dad have access to it?"

Kate pauses before giving a meager shrug of her shoulders. "I mean... it's just a basic password-protected account. Anyone can download the program so long as they have the information to the account linked to the cameras." She says, not entirely sure why he brought it up. "And my dad and I are the only ones with the information."

Rick nods and looks through the file again. If he could crack that system, maybe steal their login through just brute-force hacking techniques, that could be how he knew what time to strike.

"Why?" She asks after the air in the room grows thick with a heavy silence.

Rick swallows and takes up the picture of the first victim's body, and places it in front of her. "Tell me if uh..." he starts as he reaches for the picture of Sierra's body, "if you see a pattern." He says and places the next picture in front of her. Kate stares at the pictures for a long moment, at a total loss but feeling like the answer is obvious. She shakes her head silently and looks back up to him. "Two victims, killed within a week of each other, both women, blonde, single, both strangled."

Kate's heart locks up as she quickly catches his train of thought. "It's not his MO, Castle." She argues, reaching for the picture of the first victim. "He seduced his victims and posed them. Ms. Carlson wasn't posed."

"My guess is she was until her cats vandalized the crime scene." He says, pointing to the teeth marks and exposed flesh.

She clenches her jaw and feels her breath get tight. "You were on that bridge, Castle." She says in a low, warning tone. "You shot him yourself... seven times."

Rick looks over to her with pain lurking in his baby blue eyes, circled with signs of fatigue. "You really believe that?"

She can just stare at him before seeing that this is starting to haunt him. Tyson was always his ghost. Ever since that motel room where he caught onto Tyson's plan and exposed who the real triple killer was, he's had it in his head that Tyson's goal wasn't to get away, but to torture him, to punish him for interfering. She can't help but wonder if he knows how much she can relate to that feeling of persecution. "Okay," she says softly and reaches over the table to take his hands, "let's say, by some miracle it is Tyson. What do we do about it? They already said they have a warrant for our house, my car, the shop."

Rick pushes his fingers through her's, lacing their hands together and pets her skin with his thumbs for a moment, gaining some semblance of clarity and solace from the softness of her skin. "Tyson has one weakness and I'm going to try and exploit it this time."

Kate loses herself in the soft gestures of his fingers in the moment and looks down to his hands. She wishes she could just lay back in bed with him. "What's that?"

"For him, it's not enough to get me to suffer, he has to watch it for himself. He has to take credit for me. He has to see the look in my eyes when he takes everything away from me."

her heart hurts for him. He's talking just like she used to about Bracken before she realized that she couldn't do it without him. "You really think he's going to make the same mistake this time around?"

Rick grins and looks down to their hands. "Tyson's a sexual sadist, Kate. They're nothing if not arrogant." He says and looks back up to her, his grin quickly fading. "But right now, I need you to be safe and you're already sitting in the safest building in town. These murders are the worst crimes they've seen in over sixty years, so they'll keep you under guard and that will give me time to figure out where he made a mistake and get you out. But I need you to trust me."

Kate feels a smile tug at the corners of her lips before looking up to him and giving his hands a squeeze. "I do."

* * *

_A/N: I'm really going to try my hardest to get a chapter a day out this weekend. I have a long weekend before work slowed down again. I started work on this chapter a few weeks ago before work picked up again and before my poor, innocent wallet got ruthlessly mugged my Steam's summer sale. Let me know what you think!_

_Also, reviews may or may not be broken again. If you would like, you can either PM me what you think (still leave a review because the numbers make me feel better about myself), or leave it as an anon, since I have anon review moderation on and I can still read them before I approve them. Thanks for the understanding as FFN works their crap out. _


	41. Chapter 41

Rick feels heavy making his way away from interrogation, tossing the case file down to a random passing desk on his way with a haphazard slap as he reaches up to cup his chin in his palm, testing how thick his stubble is. He has a lot of work to do and not enough time to do it in. The only thing keeping his sanity intact right now is knowing that she's at least safe as long as they think she's the killer.

"Hey, Castle, where are you going?" A voice asks from across the station.

Rick sighs out of impatience and rolls his eyes but doesn't let his stride toward the exit falter. "I have leads to run down on my own." He hollers back, hoping it's a good enough answer, but not really caring if it isn't. He shoves the glass door open and steps outside in the cool humid spring air and turns along the path to head for the parking lot, he looks up and sees Jim, wearing a shirt identical to Kate's and a pair of dark jeans, in the middle of the parking lot looking as worried and frustrated as Rick remembers seeing him that day in the hospital.

"Rick, what's going on?" He asks in as loud of a voice as Rick's ever heard out of him while he's coming to meet him at the edge of the parking lot.

With a churning in the pit of his stomach, Rick breathes a slow, unnerving breath. "Jim, she's been-"

"My daughter's been arrested and I'm not notified? What evidence do they even have that makes them think she's responsible for these murders?" He demands, looking over Rick as angrily as his tone suggests.

"Jim," Rick starts, trying to understand the feeling of a distressed father the best he can, "I'm working as hard as I can to prove her innocence because there's someone trying to frame her."

"Frame her? Why would anyone want to do that?"

Rick sighs, feeling a small glint of guilt snake its way into his system. "I can think of a laundry list of reasons off the top of my head," he mutters to himself as he shuffles his feet, "but what's important right now is that until I can get the evidence I need to prove she's not guilty, she's safe inside the police station in case someone tries to come after her."

Looking scared, Jim quickly waves over to the station. "How do you know she's safe, Rick? Whoever's doing this could be a cop for all you know."

"Jim, I haven't worked with all of these officers but I have worked with the chief of police and I trust him. He'll keep her under guard here at the station and as long as he does that, she's safe." He says, reaching over and putting a reassuring hand on Jim's shoulder. Rick struggles to breathe out another breath, feeling his heart sink. "You can believe me that I'm not going to let anything happen to her again as long as I'm here to try and stop it."

Jim holds Rick's gaze with a deep furrow in his brow. "Well, there has to be something I can do. She needs a lawyer, doesn't she? I have a lot of friends I can-"

"Jim, if she wanted a lawyer, it would have been the first thing she asked for, but she didn't." Rick tells him.

"I-I..." he trails off, looking away on a hard sigh for a moment, then looking down to the pavement, then back to Rick. "There has to be something I can do for her. I'm not letting her go through this without me helping her. I'm her father."

Rick hates asking for something sounding so not only inconsequential but professionally private of him. "If you could let me see the security footage from a few nights ago, it might help me prove Kate's innocent."

Jim is quick to nod in a small motion. "I'll send you what you need to log into the account." Rick forces a heavy smile and nods, looking away. "C-can I at least see her?"

Rick is quick to step aside and motion toward the front door of the station. "Go ahead. If they give you any trouble, just have them call me."

Jim grins heavily before stepping around him and making for the door. "My wife may have been the litigator, Rick, but I'm still a lawyer. I'll be fine."

* * *

Rick pulls to a stop along the curb outside of the coffee shop, just off the town square. It's around ten in the morning and it looks empty, everyone having come and gone for the morning rush. If he had more to go on, he wouldn't feel this... dreadful. Or if he had his partner with him. But now, all he feels is anger mixing with a thick feeling of hopelessness in the pit of his stomach. He pulls his keys from the ignition and lets them fall into one of the cupholders in the center console while pushing his other hand into his hair, taking a fistful of it and shoving it back, knowing it probably looks horrible with how dry and oily it feels.

She's alright, she's okay, she alive. He has to remember that. Tyson was never after her. Tyson knows that putting her away for a murder she didn't commit while he's unable to stop it would probably be some sort of poetic justice for him. It was him that let him get away with murder and now he puts away the woman he loves for a murder she didn't. And both times, he couldn't stop it. He was never able to stop anything. Not Tyson from escaping, not Maddox shooting her, not his daughter from getting kidnapped, he couldn't even stop her from leaving. All he can ever do is react. That's all he's doing right now is reacting.

It's the vibrating of his cell phone that breaks him out of his thoughts. He digs it out and sees he was sent an attachment in a text message and sees it was the login information for the security system from Jim, along with a message reading _hope this helps_.

He pushes out a sigh and presses his thumb to the side button to lock it before shoving it back into the pocket of his jeans awkwardly and climbing out of his car to head into the coffee shop. As he stands and peers inside, it looks empty. On a heavy, tired sigh, he steps away from his car, closes the door, and makes for the door. Through the window, he can see two short-haired blonde women sitting beside each other at a small round table on the right side of the shop, opposite of the counter. Rick is slow to pull open the door when he notices they both have their heads hung down, the woman on the right draping her arm over the other's shoulders, who has her face buried in her hands.

People really loved Sierra.

His heart falling, Rick pulls the door open and hears the bell chime to signal his entrance. The woman on the left raises her head out of her hands and her pained expression and tearful eyes immediately turn wide and awe-struck when she sees him, while the other woman's expression turns much the same. The woman on the left leans over and begins to whack the other woman on the chest with the back of her hand and pulling at her sleeve with the other, her eyes never leaving Rick as he steps away from the door to let it close.

While they begin to quietly murmur to themselves, Rick averts his eyes to watch the door swing closed behind him before looking back over to the table, where the woman on the left is just starting to stand up and runs her fingers through her hair, a somewhat nervous smile appearing on her face. "Hi," he begins, a small smile forming on his lips.

The other woman stands up and rushes around the table and comes to a rushing stop behind the other woman, knocking into her and almost acting as if she's trying to hide behind the woman in front of her, who's smiling crazily now. "Ha..." she tries, her hands smoothing over her denim jeans, "hi... Richard Castle. You're-you're Richard Castle. _Barb, it's Richard Castle." _She whispers to the woman clutching her shoulders from behind. "I-I'm... Barbra, this is my sister, Beth." The woman behind her quickly whacks her on the shoulder and she shakes her head vigorously. "I-I mean uh... _I'm _Beth, this is Barbra, my sister."

Rick just smiles softly and nods his head in a small motion. "Hi."

Beth smiles widely and lifts her arms in the air. "Did you want something? We can get you something, can't we? Yes, let's get you something." Beth stammers and turns around, almost knocking her sister out of the way. "On the house." She says as she rounds the corner to go behind the counter.

"No, please," Rick says quickly, lifting his hand up, "I'll pay for it."

Beth smiles widely as she turns around in a wild circle, looking around the coffee shop's machines to figure out what to go for. "So," Barbra starts, still standing in front of him, "what brings you in? We've..." she trails off, letting a fangirl smile get the better of her, "both heard of you, obviously, but... you've never come in."

Rick's smile falls and he cranes his neck a bit before reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket. "I'm actually working with the police, helping them out with the murders in town." He says in a heavy voice. He can feel the mood shift on a dime in that instant as Beth stops in her frantic search to slowly pace her way out from behind the counter to stand next to her sister.

"We..." Beth starts as the sisters meet eyes, "already talked to the police."

"They came by just as we were opening this morning." Barbra says after.

Rick nods, "I understand, I'm just uh... running my own investigation into things, that's all." He says as he pulls out the picture. "Do either of you..." he says and turns the picture around in his fingers, "know her?"

Beth and Barbra both lean in to look at his and Kate's picture and it only takes a few quick moments for both of them to start smiling again. "Aww..." they coo in unison, "she looks so happy." Beth says, looking at the picture.

Rick finds himself smiling with them, albeit heavily. After a moment, he takes the picture back, letting it fall in his hands down to his stomach. "It's the only picture I have of her." He says, lifting the picture up before tucking it back safely into the inside pocket of his sport coat.

Barbra nods, "Yeah, that's Kate."

"She comes in every morning, has been for about... two months now?" Beth continues. "Orders two coffees, always tips very well."

Rick nods and motions toward them quickly. "You do make good coffee, by the way." He chimes in, earning a smile from both of them. "The police that came by this morning, did they ask about her?" When they both look to each other with a sort of sad fear coming over them, he continues on ahead of them. "If it's not too much trouble, could you tell me what they asked you?"

Beth starts to speak, but chokes on her words as she lifts her arm slightly toward him, her expression falling into anguish again. Her eyes started to redden, she shrugs her shoulders and looks up to him. "Sierra was our best friend." She says, her voice already soiled with tears. "Even now, I..." she trails off, her eyes falling away into nowhere, "I can't accept that she's gone."

Barbra steps in then, looking over to him. "What she's saying is that most people around here have been here their whole lives. Crestfield is a pretty small town, and Sierra was... I mean, you could comb the entire town and no one would have a bad thing to say about her."

Beth sniffles over congested sinuses and looks back up to him. "We like Kate, we really do, we both consider her a friend, but..."

Rick's brow pinches slightly. "But what?"

Barbra checks her sister for a second before looking back over to him. "When the police came by asking about her, they seemed pretty concerned about any times Kate talked to Sierra here at the coffee shop."

Rick pauses, looking between them. "I take it you thought of a specific incident pretty quickly."

They both look at each other, silently gauging the other before Beth looks over to him again. "There was this one morning, maybe a few weeks ago now, when Sierra was running late for work so she came in just a few minutes after Kate did."

Barbra nods and points over to a spot adjacent to the register. "She was standing over there while I made her coffee when Sierra came in and she was... well, Sierra was always a pretty happy person but..."

"She literally danced in here that morning." Beth continues with a sad smile on her face. "She told us that she'd just..." she pauses, motioning over to him, "gotten asked out by you... and..."

Barbra looks over to her sister before continuing for her, "Kate was still standing over there when Sierra told us and... well, she looks pretty upset about it."

Rick's heart just fell into the already churning pit of his stomach. Now that they're back together, he can't help but feel how much sooner it all would have happened, how much time he wasted by treating her the way he did. She shouldn't have had to find out that way. That date should never have even happened. It was a miracle that Sierra was as understanding about it as she was.

"I tried to get Sierra to stop but she was just so excited about it. But after Kate left, I explained everything to her." Beth says. "About her and you and... how she comes in every morning to get you two coffee and how she came to town to get you back and-"

"Sierra felt horrible about the whole thing, she really did." Barbra cuts her sister off, raising a hand and speaking quickly.

Rick just nods. "Yeah, I know." He says in a low voice. "She was fairly open about it when she mentioned it after dinner, actually." He says, mostly to himself, remembering her bright, happy smile after he showed her the picture tucked into his pocket. It was the first time anyone had just come out and told him that he still had feeling for her, whether he liked it or not. Looking back now, he should have been told that a long time ago. "Is that all the police wanted to know?"

"Actually," Beth starts, looking over to her sister.

"It seemed like they sort of... stopped listening after we told them that Kate got upset." Her sister continues.

Rick nods his head with a tight clench in his jaw. "Should have guessed." He mutters to himself, reaching into his back pocket. "Well, I'm here because I was going through Kate's financials and saw that she spent... seven dollars and thirty cents here the night of the murder. I was wondering if you remember her coming in."

After a moment of the sisters looking to each other, they both nod slowly. "Yeah, I remember. Monday night, Kate came in kind of late, just as we were about to lock up."

"Yeah, she came in and got a roast beef panini, bag of chips, and a... an iced latte."

"Do you remember exactly what time that was?" He asks.

"Maybe," Beth starts, "ten minutes to eight?" She shrugs. "She was here for about ten minutes before she left."

Rick looks around the shop quickly before spotting a stack of containers along the back wall of the shop and points to them. "Are those the containers you put them in?"

The sisters look over to the stack of plastic containers of black trays and clear tops and nod in unison. "Yeah, and a sticker we put on it on the top that has our logo on it."

Rick nods to himself and looks away. If he can find that container in her trash, hopefully it will be enough evidence to at least cause reasonable doubt. If she left here and eight, it would take her at least twenty minutes going through the square on a Monday night to get to Sierra's house. The main highway runs straight through the town square, so it would probably be packed at that time of night. If she came here first, the police would hopefully have a hard time believing that she went all the way to Sierra's house to kill her, then go home and eat dinner like it was no problem. It's not solid evidence, but it's enough to call into question the police's assumptions, because they want to prove their assumptions right rather than work to find the truth. They're looking for evidence to convict her, not find the killer.

Rick looks up to the sisters and nods with a grateful smile. "I appreciate the help." He says and moves toward the door.

"Uh-Mr. Castle?" One of them stops him. Rick turns to look over to them with a raise brow. "We... both really like Kate, I mean... she's always really nice and everything but... to be honest, we don't really know her that well and..." Beth starts nervously, "you probably know her better than anyone in town so, Barbra and I were wondering..." she trails off, seeming unable to finish.

Rick's brow knits. "Wondering what?"

Barbra looks over to her sister and puts a hand on her arm. "Could Kate have really done this?"

He breathes a short breath and looks down to the floor, spending a quick moment to collect his thoughts before looking back up to them. "A few years ago, we caught a case in New York. And long story short, it put us on the trail of someone pretty dangerous and it... just so happened that this person was responsible to something that happened to her." He explains, gaining both of their rapt attention. "Something horrible." He continues. "Any person would have wanted this guy dead and they would have wanted him to suffer before he got there. And after we worked the case and figured out who he was, he got the jump on us and had me at gunpoint."

That makes the sisters clutch at each other's arms.

"Well, I managed to surprise him and get away, but after I did, he lifted his gun and took aim at me." Rick continues, the memory of that tight, adrenaline-fueled feeling coming back to shake his spine. "But Kate pulled her gun and shot him three times in the chest." He says with a soft lift in his brow. "This guy was a trained killer, he was responsible for killing someone she loved, he was ready to kill me, no one would feel bad about doing what she did. But..." he trails off, shaking his head, "I watched for five minutes as Kate pushed on his chest to try and get him to stay alive, sobbing as she did."

Beth and Barbra look heartbroken, their eyes large and sad at his words.

Rick looks away again and gives them a soft nod. "Kate Beckett is a lot of things and I could spend the rest of my life writing novels about all of them... and in that time, I would never call her a murderer."

The sisters smile sadly and give him a nod. "Uh..." Beth starts, "we're... trying to organize a vigil... for Sierra and Ms. Carlson. The mayor's already on board for holding it tomorrow night in the square. It'd... really mean a lot if you'd come by. You wouldn't have to make a speech or anything but... it would mean so much to Sierra because," she trails off, smiling sadly as her emotions start to get the better of her again, "we both know that she really liked you ."

Rick smiles heavily and gives them both a nod. "I'd be honored."

* * *

_A/N: F__irst up, it seems that reviews are taking about four or five days to show up on stories. I guess this has been a problem for a while. So if you want to let me read reviews right away, you can leave anon reviews, because those still show up in the moderation page before I approve them, but they won't actually show up on the review page for a few days. Same goes for regular reviews, so if you leave a regular review on this chapter, I chances are I won't know what you said until later this week. If you want though, you can just PM me what you think, and I'll be happy__ to respond. Otherwise, I'm excited to hear what you think. (Edit thanks to wendykw: reviews are showing up fine, but I can't be sure for how long. This has been happening a lot for FFN.)_

_Second up, I got tomorrow off, so hopefully expect another chapter up by tomorrow. _


	42. Chapter 42

'_I said don't worry about it.' _He hears her say. Rick adjusts his earbuds with one hand, keeping the other hand massaging Perseus's neck as he sits against his leg on the couch, purring heavily. It hurts to see Sierra in the video footage. It's a pain he's not used to, never felt before. There she is on the screen in a pair of teal scrubs and sneakers, her short wavy blonde hair tied back in a short ponytail with a nervous smile on her face. But when he pauses the video to think, he has to remind himself that the person he's watching on the screen isn't here anymore.

It's gut-wrenchingly heart-aching.

Kate seems stiff and impatient in the video, standing a few feet from the front counter with Sierra standing a few feet from the door. Hearing Sierra talk about their date and take full responsibility for it because she found out just how much it upset Kate just got him angry. Talking to Beth and Barbra about how a normal person would feel when dealing with these things... it just reminded him that he's not as strong as Kate. Seeing Sierra now, hearing her voice, Tyson is going to suffer if he ever slips up and shows his face for what he's done.

'_No, it's just that he felt really bad about it and it... almost entirely my fault.' _Sierra explains, her gestures and body language telling him that she was being just as open and honest and happy as she always was. '_and I'm sure if I'd just stopped that he would have remembered your plans and..._' he listens sort of absentmindedly, feeling his heart sink with every word he hears her say in the video until he notices that Sierra is looking directly at Kate from where the camera is angled. '_And..._' her tone shifted. He can recognize that tone. It's part of what made her so damn easy to talk to. '_That's not why you're upset with me... is it?' _

Rick adjusts himself in the center of the couch, sitting up as he presses his earbud deeper into his ear. He notices Kate turn to face Sierra directly and take a few steps toward her. '_Why is it that he talks to you and not me?' _

Rick's heart locks up violently, and he rushes to pause the video. With a cold sweat breaking out over his skin and a tight lump forming in his throat, he tries in earnest to take a deep breath. Kate made it no secret that night about how upset she was that he talked with Sierra. It's easy to tell himself that they've made up and have gotten past it. But feelings like that are very easy to cling to, to store in your back pocket for a bad day to whip out and use them to justify something else that went wrong. He knows it's not healthy, akin to a recovering drunk keeping a bottle of whiskey in his pocket in case the day does come when he falls off the wagon.

Rick shakes his head, scratching Persues on his head and then reaching over to scratch Sasha's head also, who's curled up in a ball and mashed into his other side, then goes to unpause the video.

_'That man was my partner for four years before we started seeing each other._' She's getting angry, emotional. The only times she's had the tone of voice about her are the times their relationship hasn't made it to the other side in one piece. '_We dated for an entire year and every time I would try and get him to talk about our relationship, all he would do is smirk. How can he talk to you and not me?' _

Rick swallows thickly and looks away from the screen for a second. He loved her more than anyone else in his life. If anyone was owed being his honest self and opening a few closest to lay some skeletons bare, it was her.

'_Are you saying I don't listen to him?' _Kate scolds angrily. She was really made with Sierra, he'll at least admit that.

_'Did... you listen to him when he told you that he loved you?' _Sierra challenges her in a calm, unjudgemental voice.

'_That was different!" _Kate shouts.

"No it wasn't." He talks to himself, his heart hurting from everything being brought back up, the seal on that bottle of whiskey getting cracked. '_No,' _he hears Sierra say, '_it wasn't'. _

Rick shakes his head and forces himself to look away. She didn't deserve to die. She should be here. He stops listening for a moment, his emotions starting to get twisted and wretched, but starts to listen again after a few more moments. '_You were the first person in his life to want to be with him just for him and not anything else.' _When Rick focuses on the screen, he can see Kate crying. '_But when you left, it proved to him that it still wasn't enough.' _

"Story of my damn life." He says to himself out loud, but it brought out of it by Sasha taking her head out of the ball she curled herself into next to him to lay her chin onto his thigh with a sigh. He can't help but smile and hit his hand on her head, petting her softly as the noise in his earbuds goes unnoticed. "Not for you though, huh?" He asks his dog with a smile.

'_Sierra?' _He hears Kate ask in the video and turns his attention back, seeing Sierra holding the door open with Kate turned to her with loose shoulders and a calm, thankful expression on her face. '_Thank you.' _After that, Sierra goes out the door and Kate just stands there looking toward it. After another long few seconds, he sees her grab for her necklace again, clutching the two rings tightly and pressing them to her chest, her eyes drifting shut. He can see her raise her shoulders and drop them as she lets out a deep breath before turning back to go into the back of the store again.

"Well," he talks to his pets as he pulls his earbuds out and moves his laptop off his legs, "she wasn't engulfed with murderous fury when Sierra left." He says while Sasha is lifting her head up of his leg with her ears perked up in interest. He leans forward and puts his hand in the fur of Sasha's side. "The police think Kate killed her because she was jealous. This is proof that Sierra wanted us to get back together and that we weren't interested in each other." He summarizes for Sasha. "Should at least through motive out the window. Now, there's just means and opportunity."

He clips for video out in an mp4 file and quickly emails it to Chief with a message telling him that it's proof that Kate had no motive to kill Sierra if Sierra was telling Kate how to get back together with him, in so many words. On a sigh, he sets his laptop down onto the coffee table just as a timid knock sounds on his door. _"Rowf!" _Sasha barks and is off the couch and is by the door before Rick can even stand up.

Rick makes his way over to the door, stepping around Sasha, checking to see who it is before unlocking the deadbolt. Usually, he'd make sure Sasha doesn't have an angle to the door but this time, he's giving her as wide an opening as possible. When he sees it's just Greg from across the street with his head hung low and hands hanging from the pockets of his slacks, he quickly moves in between the door and Sasha and opens it. "Greg," Rick says in a heavy voice.

Greg looks up with a heavy smile and nods. "Hey, Rick." He offers just a heavy greeting.

Rick takes a moment to see if Greg is going to lead, but after Greg looks away, he takes it for him. "How's Cecilia doing?"

He can see as Greg's eyes go blank and he's pulled into his thoughts. "I've never felt so helpless in my life." He says in a sad tone. He looks back up to Rick and can see that the man isn't built to handle this kind of thing. Him and his wife have a pretty healthy marriage, they love each other very much, are very happy. But everyone has a breaking point. "I've never seen my wife like this or... anyone like this before."

All Rick can do is nod.

Greg's expression stills as white, haunted, like seeing his wife as broken as she is is like watching your own house burn down with no way to put it out, like the person you love is breaking apart at the seems and you have no way to keep them together because, in a lot of ways, that's exactly what's happening. "She won't get out of bed, she won't talk to me, she won't even look at me."

Rick just nods solemnly. Trauma like that is a near-impossible test for some couples. He really can't help but think, maybe a bit selfishly, about him and Kate. That if they would be able to make it passed something like this. "Her and Sierra must have been really close."

Greg smiles a sad smile and nods. "About the closest sisters I've ever seen." He says and Rick can feel his heart ache, for a number of reasons. Never knowing what it's like to have anyone even resembling a sibling growing up, for never giving Alexis the opportunity to have someone like that in her life. "You know," Greg continues, "me and my little brother aren't all that close ever since I moved out here, but...Cecelia and Sierra... they were like perfect sisters. They did everything growing up. I'm just..." his voice falters and he looks away, "I'm just not sure if she can make it passed this."

Rick nods and shrugs his shoulders, "She will, Greg, she ju-_uh-_ust..." he stutters as a pair of claws dig into the back of his legs, "uh," he continues as Perseus climbs his back. Rick reaches behind him and pushes the cat up his back and onto his shoulder, leaving the Siamese nestled over his right shoulder. "She just needs some time."

Greg looks visibly taken aback when he sees Perseus up on Rick's shoulder and points. "Is that... Sierra's cat?"

"_Mmmmmm-" _Perseus growls.

"Shh!" He orders Perseus and puts a hand on the cats back, turning back to Greg with a nervous smile. "Yeah, I uh..." he lifts his shoulder to keep Perseus in place, "I found him giving Andrew a hard time at the scene. They said they were taking him to the shelter, which is a kill shelter so I sort of..." he trails off, looking over to the cat whose pupils are blackened and dead set on Greg, "took him in but..." he look back over to Greg, who is still eyeing the cat perched on Rick's shoulder cautiously, "you can take him if you want. It might help Cecelia cope."

But Greg is already shaking his head. "N-no that's uh..." he waves his hand, "that's alright. That cat hates everybody."

"_Mmmmmm-" _Perseus growls again.

"Usually, anyway." Greg adds. Rick smiles heavily and pries Perseus off his shoulder and cradles him in his arm. "I was just wondering if you could help me out, Rick. I mean, you've dealt with murders and stuff before. Do you think you can talk to her for me?"

Rick can only smile darkly and look down to the cat squirming to make himself comfortable in his grasp. "Greg, I'm not exactly the person to be handing out advice to anyone on how to have a healthy marriage."

Greg looks awash with hopelessness at hearing that and Rick wishes he could be of more help. But he knows that nothing he would say to her would have any impact. Whatever she needs to hear has to come from her husband and he has no idea what that is. "Alright, I understand."

There's a tense silence between the two as a wind cuts the tops of the trees. "How's the baby doing, by the way?" He asks as the thought occurs to him.

Greg smiles heavily and nods. "It's healthy. I just hope that Cecelia... well, you know." He says in a heavy voice. "I'm afraid if I bring it up, it will just remind her of how excited Sierra was to be an aunt and then it will just..." he trails off and hangs his head. "I wanted to suggest that we name it after Sierra but... it's stupid. She's barely out of her first trimester."

Rick smiles heavily, "If it saves your marriage, I think it's worth the gamble to say it's a girl, Greg."

Greg smiles, the happiest he has since he showed up, a small ray of hope seeming to shine on him. "Yeah." He says and nods. "Yeah, thanks, Rick." Rick just smiles with him and looks down to Perseus." And um," he starts again, "before I forget, some detectives showed up with the police this morning, a little bit after you left." Rick's demeanor changes in that instant and Greg notices and turns nervous. "They wanted to know about that woman that comes by."

Rick just nods as neutrally as he can. "What'd you say?" He asks, hoping it didn't come off to dark and demanding. "Just... maybe I can clear the air."

Greg shakes his head. "Well, I mean, you two have argued a lot." He answers in a small voice. "I didn't exactly want to lie to them so I-I... I mean, there were a few times when Cecelia and I could hear you two shouting, Rick." He points out, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. "I told them that it wasn't every morning, but-"

"Let me guess," Rick sighs, "they just stopped listening after you told them that she yelled a few times?"

Greg looks around before leaning in nervously. "Rick, I didn't mean to get her in trouble, but I didn't want to lie to the police. And I'm sorry but if she really did have something to do with Sierra and Ms. Carlson being-"

Rick's eyes widen. "Ms. Carlson." He says, a revelation hitting him like a semi-truck. "They had proof that it was the same killer!" He excitedly says to himself before turning back inside to less Perseus down and grabs his keys off the table by the side of the door.

* * *

Standing in the center of the small holding cell, she feels...

It's impossible. "You're sure?" She asks the ME, who's standing on the other side of the bars with a single paper in his hand, looking at her over a pair of glasses.

The doctor just purses his lips and shrugs his shoulders. "You understand that I have to put this in my final report." He says to her.

She can't even feel her heartbeat. Her stomach feels like a giant knot. Her legs don't even feel like they're holding her up. This is impossible.

"And," the doctor continues as she spaces out completely, "everyone on the investigation will see it."

That gets her attention and she's rushing to the bars, her eyes burning. "Doctor, please, you-"

Kate cuts off her words with the giant of a man that runs the local police comes through the door of the holding cell. "Doctor," he says as he's taking his keys off his belt, "you're dismissed."

The ME looks between Chief and her before the corners of his mouth tuck in and he gives her an understanding nod. "My final report will be on your desk soon, Sir."

"See that it is, Doctor." Chief says as he's shoving the key into the door. "As for you, Ms. Beckett," he says and yanks the door open, the metal reverberating against the walls loudly. Her heart is galloping wildly around in her chest. "You're free to go."

Kate blinks, still trying to figure out just which way is up after the world that was just thrown for too many loops. "But..." she stammers and walks on very weak legs out of the holding cell when Chief steps aside and pulls the key out with a spin of the key ring, "I don't understand."

"Well, Ms. Beckett, we didn't either." He says, his voice as confident and bravado as his stature suggests of him. "But during our investigation, we came across something that suggests that you had no reason to be jealous of Sierra. There were also some timeline discrepancies for that night brought to our attention, but what cleared you is that whoever did kill Sierra Baker also killed Nancy Carlson and that we're positive of."

Kate looks around before looking back up to the Chief and shaking her head. "I still don't understand. How am I cleared then?"

"Because according to multiple people, on the night of Nancy Carlson's murder, you were sick in bed with the flu." Kate feels struck by a feeling of relief, forcing the tight grip of dread, fear, and hopelessness to loosen its stranglehold on her if only for a moment. Then it's just another moment before she's fighting a smile as her heart starts to flutter. "You free to go, Ms. Beckett."

She feels her smile engulf her face as she takes another step away from the cell. "Thank you, Chief."

She starts for the door just as Chief is stepping ahead of her and pulling it open for her. "And if you'd be so kind as to not sue us." He says in a low voice. Kate looks over her shoulder with a crocked brow. "Your dad might have threatened us with a lawsuit for wrongful incarceration before we let him see you this morning. And believe me, the last thing I want to deal with is being sued for screwing up an investigation that already has my ass on the line."

Kate makes her way through the door with a smile. "You know, Sir, if I was in your shoes, I probably would have arrested me too."

Chief belts out a loud chuckle as he walks with her back out toward desks. "That's a relief coming from a detective as decorated as yourself, Ms. Beckett." Kate smiles and looks toward the door with excitement bubbling over in her system. "And uh..." Chief continues, "if you don't hold this against us..." Chief smiles, "I do fish in my spare time."

Kate smirks over her shoulder. "I'll set up a police discount for you."

When Chief smiles and turns to march back to his office, she hears him start to bark more orders to his officers and Kate turns her quick, excited walk into a light jog when she sees his car parked on the curb outside of the police station. Her hand slam into the door and she shoves it open to see him look up to her with a soft smile and push off the side of his silver Lexus. Seeing him again, her love for him exploding in her, she goes into a full run toward him and jumps into his arms, giggling happily into the crock of his neck as he lifts her off the ground. He hugs her tighter than she's ever felt and in this moment, she can't help but feel that everything is going to work out great for them, that everything that will get thrown at them will bounce off like it's nothing.

He did it. He saved her... and never doubted her for a moment, never lost faith in her, never wavered. He passed the test that she failed and she can't help but admire him for it as she squeezes his neck with her arms.

He sets her down and she looks up to him with her eyes dancing, putting a hand on his jaw, looking deeply into the eyes of the love of her life. "You're amazing, you know that?"

Rick smiles softly and looks down, clasping his hands together over the small of her back. "You might want to stop now or I might get a swelled head."

Kate giggles happily, a bright, toothy smile splitting her face apart as the light of the setting sun shines his ruggedly handsome face with a beautiful light. "You really are amazing, Castle."

He just looks up to her with a soft smile as he holds her. "Let me take you home."


	43. Chapter 43

_A/N: You guys seriously have no idea how long I've waited to write this chapter. Like... seriously no idea._

* * *

Kate draws a long breath in through her nose, nuzzling herself into his side and wrapping her arm around his bare chest and enjoying the feeling of their bare legs tangling together under the covers.

God, she's missed this the most. Snuggling in bed with him after making love. Putting her ear to his chest and listening to the soft rhythmic thud of his heartbeat that sounds just so life-affirming, feeling him pull her closer to him with every rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, the motion of his breathing slowly lulling her into the best sleep she's ever had, the soft patterns the pads of his fingers tickle against her shoulder as he holds her and the easy chill of his breath going into her hair.

"Hmmm..." She moans deeply and cracks her eyes open to peer through the candle-lit bedroom, searching the canyons of the covers for where his other hand lays. She flattens her hand onto his abs, petting the outline of his muscles with the side of her thumb lustfully before sliding it across his stomach and taking hold of his hand, lazily and clumsily entangling their fingers together and pulling his hand up to rest on his stomach. The shadows of the candles that are lit on the dresser and the nightstands are dancing and flickering across his chest and his arms. Looking at their joined hands in the candle light, she feels a sense of intense wonderment blossom inside of her.

She smiles brightly against his chest and turns her face into his skin when she sees him pet her thumb with his. A small, inch in a half long motion across the side of her palm that shows her he's just as entranced by cuddling in bed with her as she is. Making slow melodic love with him again that led to this, her favorite part of them, just cuddling up together in bed to let everything else in the world fall away and be romantic and passionate and lazy with each other, it's times like now with him that remind her of why she tried so hard and waited for the right time to get it right and get it right with him. She's being cradled against the body of a man she's never been deeper in love with than she is in this moment and it should scare her.

But here, in his arms, in his bed, she can rest her eyes knowing that she's not scared of anything. Here, in this bed, under the covers with him, there's nothing wrong with the world.

She snuggles her head against his chest again and puts her ear to his pec and closes her eyes, listening to that strong thud of his heartbeat. "Hmmm..." she sighs again as his chest rises and falls with his steady breath, "you've no idea how much I've missed this, Castle." She slurs.

Rick cups her arm as she settles back into his side, watching the shadows of the stucco ceiling dance from the candles he lit. "I suppose you're right." He says as his mind drifts. He feels her readjust herself against his chest and thinks he can feel her eyes on him. He shouldn't let his mind wander this much, he shouldn't drive himself this crazy. He's lying in bed with the most beautiful woman ever put on this planet, they spent the entire evening making love, she's crazy about him, there's an engagement ring on a necklace on the nightstand opposite him that she's just waiting for him to slip onto her finger so they can get married.

But he's here trying to make out faces of monsters in the shadows cast against the stucco plaster on the ceiling.

"I did this a lot, Kate." He says in a low voice. She tries to enjoy the rumble of his voice in his chest against her face, but his tone is a rising tide in the paradise they built in this bedroom.

She snuggles herself against his chest again and presses herself tighter against his side. "Did what?" She asks in the same quiet, low voice as him.

Rick's eyes move around the ceiling absentmindedly. "Just... sat in bed at night, staring at the ceiling." Kate moves to look up at him, and sure enough, he's staring dead-eyed straight up to the ceiling, a pained pinch in his brow. "After you left."

She can feel her heart get stabbed. She has words in her head, on her tongue, about how there were nights when she couldn't even go into her bedroom at night because she knew that laying down would make her think of him. And in that life she lead, it was hard to keep pretending it never happened but it was also the least painful. But she swallows all of it and decides to stay silent and not make it about her. She wants to her from him now.

And after a moment of petting a slow line into her shoulder with the tip of his finger to cling to a piece of her warmth, he continues. "I used to imagine you coming back... of just coming through the bedroom door and crawling into bed with me and I'd... put my arms around you and hold you, let my eyes drift shut to the smell of your hair. I'd just stare at the ceiling for night on end waiting for it to happen."

She feels her eyes burn and reaches over to swat away a tear from her eye before it lands on his skin. "It's okay to hate me for it, Rick."

He shakes his head, curling his arm around her to pull her deeper into his embrace as he reaches back over his stomach to grab her hand again. "I never hated you for any of it." He says in a soft voice, petting her shoulder. "More that I hated myself for letting you go."

Kate sniffles, shamefully when the sound voices off the walls. "You didn't let me go, Castle, I ran." She says in a pained voice, moving her head against his chest and curling herself into a ball against his side. "I should have just come to you about everything."

"No, I..." he starts, shaking his head and still staring up at the ceiling, "I should have tried harder. I should have put more effort into us than I did."

Kate shakes her head against his chest and reaches over his stomach to cling to his side and hug herself to him. "No, Castle, no." She says in a hushed voice as she hugs him tightly. "I shouldn't have let you worry so much about us after everything we'd gone through to be together. Please, don't apologize for anything. You..." She says and lifts her head off his chest and scoots herself up the bed and leans over him, looking down to him and seeing his blue eyes glimmer darkly in the candlelight, "you've _more _than proven to me the kind of man you are to me."

His eyes dance and flicker around her perfect, haunting features as she looks down to him, her beautiful face eliminated perfectly by the candles. His heart physically aches to look at how beautiful she is as he reaches up to brush her hair behind her ear. "I guess I just haven't proven it to myself then."

Kate smiles sadly, reaches over, and puts a hand on his jaw, scratching his stubble gently with her fingernail. "You've proven it to me." She tells him in a soft but confident voice. "You've proven to me that... that you care very deeply about the people you love, and that you believe in them with all your heart, and you'll defend them with everything it takes, and you'll protect them."

Rick's heart clenches tightly at her words as he reaches behind her ear to put his hand on the back of her neck, his thumb stroking her jaw. "I'm not entirely sure what I did to prove all that to you."

Kate narrows her eyes with a sly grin. "I have a feeling this is turning into you just fishing for compliments." She tells him with a smile. But Rick just looks away for a moment and she can feel his skin clam up a bit. "Rick, after everything that happened between us, and how..." she struggles, looking down to his chest as she covers his heart with her hand, "and how deeply I broke your heart, it would have been _so _easy for anyone to want to believe what you were told today. But you..." she pauses and feels a smile lift her features and warm her insides, "you never doubted me."

Rick looks into her eyes, but seeing her and knowing her own strength, he just feels weak.

"You never wavered in your convictions, you never judged me, you never came to me and made accusations like I did with those stupid emails Tyson wrote. You were sure that I had nothing to do with it even though everybody else was ready to put me away. When everyone else would have saw me and demanded I look them in the eye and tell them I had nothing to do with it, you..." she struggles again, her heart exploding for this man, "you just asked if I was okay. You only cared about me. And you never lost faith in me." She says with tears in her eyes.

He musters a soft smile and nods against his pillow with her still looking down to him. "Kate, I've always felt that..." he starts, having to look away when he says it, "that you were a lot stronger than me. Without you, I feel... compulsive and weak."

Kate reaches over and cups his jaw, encouraging him to look back up to her. "Rick, what are you talking about?"

He blinks hotly as he looks down between them for a moment. "Do you remember the case you worked for Bracken?" Her heart skips a beat violently when he mentions that name. "And someone was after him?" All she can do is nod stiffly. "Kate, you were strong enough to put your emotions and put all of those things you just said made _me _strong aside and do your job, so he could be put away the right way."

"Rick, _believe _me..." she growls, "saving that man was _not _an easy decision to make."

"But it would have been for me." He says without hesitation, his jaw tensing under her touch. "And I would have decided to stand back and revel in that man being killed."

Kate looks into his eyes, cupping his jaw again, "Rick, why are you bringing this up?"

He stares up at her with a hard gaze for a second before he cracks. "I want him dead, Kate." She lets out a pained sigh as her hand falls off his jaw and lands on his shoulder. "I want Tyson dead. I want him to suffer for everything he's put me through, for everything he's put _us _through, for what he did to Sierra. I _want _him _dead." _He says angrily, his teeth and jaw clenched.

Kate breathes a pained sigh out and lowers her body down to him, pressing their naked chests together and putting her hand into his hair. "Babe..."

It's then that she can see his eyes glimmer. "You're strong enough to put it all aside and do the right thing, but I'm not."

"Babe, listen to me," she urges him in a soothing, caring voice, "you _are _strong enough for this." His angry stone face softens and his eyes gaze longingly up at her. "What I think you're feeling is something that I think makes you one of the first things I fell in love with about you and do you know what that is?"

When she doesn't continue and looks into his eyes expectantly, every second chipping away more and more at his armor with those big, beautiful hazel eyes of hers that dance so perfectly in the candle light. "What?"

She smiles and moves her fingers through his hair. "A very dedicated and very loving father." His throat closes at that. Thinking Alexis would ever have to see him turn into that. Even thinking of her hearing him talk about Tyson is painful. "I want Tyson to pay for what he's done too, Rick, and he _will._" She says pointedly. "But don't call yourself weak because when the time comes, you don't know what you are and aren't willing to do, okay?"

But his eyes just harden back up. "I'm a parent, Kate." He says just as pointedly as she did, but a serpent just snaked its way around her heart. "I do know." Kate swallows thickly seeing this side of him... and wondering if it's a change she'll see again. "But you're right, I don't know what's going to happen when Tyson decides to show his face, but..." he says and looks back up to her, his gaze softening again, "I need you to be the strong one for me."

Her eyes are burning. There wasn't a thing wrong before they started talking. Kate blinks away tears as her stomach knots and after a moment, she lifts herself out of his side and straddles him, their eyes locked. She reaches down for his hands and entwines their fingers together. "Do you remember our first night together, Rick?"

His eyes flicker over her perfectly slender body set aglow by the candles, "It's a night that's going to flash before my eyes when I die."

She squeezes his hands and nods with burning eyes. "You remember how we..." she trails off as she slowly steamrolls her body on top of his, "just made love until our bodies gave out? And we just collapsed and fell asleep in whatever way we were holding each other?" She asks him, her body now draped over him completely, her lips just a small touch away.

"You know I remember, Kate."

She looks into his eyes for a long moment before the need to be carried away becomes too much. "Make love to me, Rick."

* * *

It's brisk the next morning.

The air feels crisp it enters his lungs, running through the woods again. She was still asleep when he woke up and got dressed in his workout clothes and hooked Sasha to her lead outside. The night before was incredible for them, in a lot of ways. It was draining, emotionally. But satisfying. She loves him. He can't doubt that anymore. And spending the night in bed with her again, having her in his arms for the whole night, how much he laid bare for her and how much she accepted. She wasn't hard and judgemental. She was slow, caring, understanding.

Oh so beautiful.

He didn't fall in love with her all over again last night. She got him to see that he never fell out of love with her at all. Even in the deepest parts of his despair after she left, he wasn't blaming her. He just... missed her. He missed holding her, having her, talking with her. He missed having to untangle himself from her body when he woke up first like he did this morning.

They'll get through this. And when Tyson shows up, he'll be ready.

As Rick jogs back toward the house along the path that parallels the lake, he looks ahead and sees the bench where he found Sasha, feeling a smile come across his face as it always does when he sees it, and sees a rowboat pushed up to the shore in front of it. His breath hitches when he sees it, but he can't react in time.

Before he can stop, a dark, hooded, slender figure in all black turns out from behind a tree just as he passes it. And it's not even a second after that he feels the blade in his stomach.

"_Mmm!" _He grunts as his body is paralyzed.

He can only feel the shape of the knife sticking in his stomach the figure grabs onto his arm, pulls the knife out and jams it into his gut a second time just as hard. "_Mmm!" _He grunts again, his eyes burning and his body weakening. "_Mmm!" _He cries as he's stabbed a second time, the figure clutching itself against him.

He doubles over and the figure just stands there as he falls to the ground in searing, unbelievable, pain. "Mmmmm...mmmm..." he cries as his limbs start to twitch.

Above him, he sees the figure turn and look down to him before pulling off the hood, looking down to him with a blank stare of contempt.

"Mmmm..." he cries as he locks eyes with the woman only for a second before she's brushing her short, blonde hair back and turning away and heading toward the rowboat that sits on the shore.

* * *

There was a pot of coffee already made in the kitchen and Sasha's already on her lead outside. She got a cup for herself, mostly for show.

She can't tell him yet.

She steps outside in her work clothes of a pair of light blue jeans and a store t-shirt, two mugs of coffee in her hands, takes a deep breath of the brisk morning air, and heads down the porch steps to meet him underneath the oak tree. When her feet hit the grass, she hears the trees being shaken and can hear Sasha whimpering loudly. She looks up and peers across his yard and over to the woods.

But when she sees him stagger off the path and brace himself on a passing tree, she stops. When she sees the stomach of his grey tanktop soaked in blood, the mugs get dropped to the ground and her legs take off in a full sprint toward him, her heart pounding, fear and adrenaline coursing through her as she digs out her cell phone to dial.

'_911, what is-' _

"320 Elk Street," she cries into the phone as she sprints across his lawn just as he collapses onto the ground on his back, "Richard Castle, he's been hurt, we need an ambulance." She sobs into the phone.

'_Okay, ma'am, stay...' _The woman's voice fades as Kate drops the phone and ducks underneath Sasha's violently jolting lead.

"_Rick!" _She cries as she slides through the grass and takes him up in her lap, hot tears falling from her eyes. _"_No... no, please." She begs, looking at his stomach soaked in blood, his arms clutching weakly.

"Mmmm..." he moans painfully, trembling in her arms.

"No, no, stay with me, okay?" She starts, looking into his tear-filled eyes. "You're going to be fine! You hear?" She tells him, reaching up as he lays his trembling head in her arm, and lays her other hand on his jaw, petting his cheek with her thumb.

"Ku..." he chokes after opening his mouth.

"No," she says, shaking her head as Sasha begins to violently pull against her lead, trying to force her way out of her collar to get to him, whimpering loudly as she does. "Don't try to talk, okay? Just... just look at me, okay?" She says as hot tears sting her eyes when she sees him look away, his body shaking violently in her arms. "Look at me, Rick." She pleads.

"_Mmm_mm!" He groans and pushes against her thigh.

She shakes her head, knits her brow, and looks down to her thigh. In blood, he's written _3XK, _with a quick slash drawn through it.

Her eyes widen and she looks back up to him. "It's not Tyson." She breathes.

Rick just looks up at her desperately, shaking violently.

Kate reaches up and cups his jaw again. "You're going to be fine... okay?" She continues to cry. "I... I can hear sirens. They're coming!" She tries with a desperate smile, but can see his eyes struggling to maintain. "No... no!" She cries. She... not like this. "Rick, there's something you have to know." She says as he continues to tremble in her lap, his eyes squeezing shut before rolling about angrily. "I'm-"

"_MMMmmmMMMmmm!" _He moans angrily and pushes against her thigh again.

She looks down and sees it... the small heart he's drawn a few inches above her knee, in blood. He loves her.

A bright, desperate smile splits her face in two and she sobs out a choked, struggling laugh. "_Ha!" _She sobs and feels hot tears well up even more in her eyes as she looks back up to him, petting his cheek. "I love you too."

He looks up to her eyes and lets a tear fall out of his eye, each shake marking a struggling breath. But after just a few more, his eyes start to shut.

"No..." she pleads as he goes limp in her arms. "Noo-oo-ooo..." she sobs frantically as Sasha finally forces herself out of her collar and rushes over to her master.

When Kate looks up and sees the streets empty, she takes in as big a breath as she can, and yells at the top of her lungs. "_Heeeeeeeelp!"_

* * *

_A/N: Seriously... no idea. I've been dropping like... seriously, no idea how long I've been waiting to get to this chapter! _


	44. Chapter 44

In the end, this is why she pushed for so long. Why she remained as steadfast against her feeling for him as she could for as long as she did.

She'll never... ever forget any of this. Every time she looks at him, she'll remember everything, right down into her bones. And it's the most terrifying feeling she's ever felt. Sitting in the cold, sterile, colorless hallway of Crestfield Urgent Care, on the floor with her legs curled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees with her nose pressed into her forearm, her finger lightly tracing the drawing of a heart made of his dried blood in an absentminded motion... she's just staring off into space with a pair of cried out eyes.

The motion around her goes by in a daze, like a book being read where the words just aren't registering. The nurses and doctors scurrying about as they go about what's probably nothing more than a job or their duty to them, some local residents coming and going, staring at her as they pass after they finished with their checkups or something else just as minor.

She'll never forget any of it. She can't even stop thinking about it. Even her arms still feel like they're shaking, shaking him to come back to her, shaking Sasha to back up as she desperately tried to help her beloved master the only way she knew how, shaking the paramedics to bring him back when she heard them say they were losing him, or even the nurses shaking her to tell her that she couldn't follow them into the ER. It's like nothing else has happened in her life before now. This is all she can think about, all that defines her, all she's experienced.

Sitting against the wall in a hallway adjacent to the black swinging doors of the ER, on the floor behind a row of plastic chairs, she still pets the small heart on her thigh with her finger as the sound of some loud footsteps come running down the hall from the opposite direction. "Where-" the voice calls out, but doesn't shake Kate from her daze, "where is he?! Where's my dad?!" She hears them yell.

Kate hears the soiled tone of the voice and her eyes flood with tears again. She's so weak, so pathetic. But she just... she just can't stop it. Every time even the thought of getting up and doing something, the feeling of him going limp in her arms rams her like an oncoming truck and all she can do is repeat the tracing of the heart on her thigh. The voices get muffled as her eyes flood with tears that she doesn't blink away.

"Beckett?" She hears break through the fog, but still, she can't bring herself to move.

All she gets is the feeling of his firm, muscularly toned body going limp and lifeless in her arms, taking all life inside of her with it.

"Beckett?" Alexis asks again, her voice scarred and soiled as she kneels down in front of her. But Kate can only stare off into space, her eyes red and leaking with emotion. "Beckett, what happened? Please, talk to me!" The girl demands on paralyzed ears as Kate can only trace the small heart he drew on her.

The last words he got from her... painted on her forever.

"Beckett!" Alexis cries again, reaching forward and lightly shaking her by the elbow that she's holding her legs with.

He died in her arms. He died in her arms. She...

"_Ugh!" _Alexis cries angrily and stands up, going to pacing the floor wildly in front of her before angrily marching around the corner. "Gram?" She can hear a few moments later, her voice still very thick and shaky. "Gram, it's Dad." As another wave of hot tears flood her eyes that she simply doesn't have the strength to blink away, she can almost hear Martha on the other end of the line from here. "He's in the hospital," Alexis cries from around the corner, "I-I don't know. Cecilia and Greg, they-they called me and told me something happened, but I... Gram, I don't know what to do! I..." Alexis pauses, her voice scared and frantic.

She wishes she had the strength to act. She wishes she didn't know exactly what the girl was going through. But feeling him... she just can't.

"I-I..." Alexis sighs with a choked breath, "Beckett's here but..." the girls says while Kate suddenly feels a pair of eyes on her as she lets the hot tears in her eyes fall. "Gram, she's sitting on the floor, staring off into space! She won't even _look _at me!" The girl sobs. "No, Gram, I..." she stops and trails off. "I can't do this on my own, I don't know how!" Alexis cries, sounding like a scared little girl, because that's probably what she is.

Kate wishes she didn't know exactly what the girl is going through, wishes she the girl didn't have to know either, wishes more she had the strength to do something about it. But she just doesn't. He's still lying in her arms. His toned, muscular body that she spent last night making love to, that she was held against as she fell asleep, is still in her arms... shaking. She can't think of anything else.

"Okay... okay, but Gram, please hurry." The girl cries, her voice tight and emotional. "I'm all alone."

Time seems to pass unnoticed after Alexis disappears, leaving Kate still sitting on the floor, tracing the dried blood on her thigh, where it will stay... forever. Kate can't tell how long she sits on the floor, staring off into space with cold, dry tears lingering in eyes that she doesn't have the will or the strength to move to wipe away. She just sits on the floor against the wall behind a set of chairs with her legs curled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. It's like she's trapped inside of her own body.

"I don't _care _if they're in bed, I don't even care if they're in _labor! _I want everyone who has a uniform _in _that uniform and on their beats _now!" _She hears a loud, commanding voice boom from the other end of the hospital. "Get me two cars down here and send those detectives to 320 Elk street and get them to work." Chief barks into his radio as he stops abruptly in the middle of the corridor as a nurse nearby stops, looking up to the giant of a man with wide eyes. Chief's radio chatters for a second before he's barking back into it. "_No, _you tell them to _leave _that family alone! They've been through enough, understand? They work Castle's residence and _nothing _else!" He lowers his radio and clips it back onto his belt as he looks up and moves his sunglasses up to his shaved head. "Uhh..." he sighs angrily.

"Sir," the nurse says timidly, "did you need he-"

"Castle, Richard." Chief barks at her. "I need an update."

Kate can hear as the nurse breathes a nervous breath. "He's still in surgery, Sir. That's all I know." There's a moment of thick silence where Kate inwardly braces herself for Chief to bark another order at the timid nurse, but it never comes.

Chief just plants his hands on his hips and looks about. "I'm stationing two officers outside and two officers in here, understand?" He says in a low voice.

"Yes, Sir."

"And when he's moved into a room, I want those officers guarding it around the clock. I don't want anyone going in there without me knowing about it."

There's another pause and the first feeling Kate can feel is the clench in her heart when she feels the nurses unspoken words. "Yes, Sir." She says instead and moves down the hall.

"Eh..." another small, timid voice squeaks, "excuse me, sir?" Alexis says.

She can see Chief turn around quickly and look down the hall that leads toward the entrance. "You must be Alexis." He says in a much calmer, caring voice. "Your dad told me a lot about you." She's not expecting Alexis to answer that... because she wouldn't. She didn't respond to anyone saying things like that when she met her mother's coworkers at the funeral. "Don't worry, Alexis, no cop on my police force is going off the clock until we catch whoever did this, okay? Now... do you have any other family you want me to call?"

"I-I already called my grandma and she's going to try and catch the next flight out as soon as she can."

"Okay," the Chief says, his loud, booming, commanding voice giving way to a softer, more caring, compassionate voice. "What about any other family or friends? Is there anyone else?"

"No," she answers in a soiled voice.

"Okay," Chief answers again. "Well, until this is all over, I'm going to have officers guarding him twenty-four seven. So don't worry, and if you need me, here's my personal number, alright?"

"Thanks," she hears Alexis answer in a low, drained voice. After a moment, the Chief moves away and Alexis crosses her arms and paces about the corridor looking down to the floor for a moment before her eyes turn up to look toward the entrance and she takes off in a jog.

Kate can't even manage to focus her eyes, through hot, burning tears even. All she can feel is him, still. All she can see is him, his cheek stained with the track of a tear running out of his scared blue eyes. All she can hear is the frustrated whimper he let out as he pushed against her thigh after drawing the heart that she's yet to stop tracing the pattern of. How... how could he have...

"Kate?" She hears from the side, but can't seem to respond to the sound. "Katie."

She sees her dad step in front of her and kneel down, trying to catch her eye line. But she just keeps staring off into space with wide eyes as she rests her mouth on her forearm, her finger never leaving the dried blood on her thigh.

"Katie, I heard about what happened, are you..." her dad tries as he reaches up and puts a hand on her elbow. "Sweetie, are you okay?"

"Mmm..." she whimpers shakingly, inaudible to him.

Jim looks over his daughter, frightened that she's not even responding to him. "I'm going to go get a nurse, honey, hang on."

"He was so much stronger than I ever realized." She finally says as her dad stands up, her voice small and unreliable. Jim stops and looks down to his daughter, sure he just heard her speak, and kneels back down in front of her, putting a hand back on her elbow. "I..." she tries, but has to stop to shore up the steadiness of her voice with a large breath in, "died... in his arms... and he kept going. He-" she stops, taking in another breath, almost panting on her words, "was strong enough to keep going after I was shot. He... felt me die but kept going."

"Katie, Rick was as torn up as anybody at the hospital. I was there."

"He-" she continues, her eyes still wide, even as another wave of tears well up in them, "loved me... I died in his arms... and he was strong enough to keep going... and do what he had to." She says, her voice breaking with a sob. "He... was _so _much stronger than I _ever _gave him credit for."

"Katie, Rick's not-"

"I can't." She interrupts him.

Jim pauses, reaching over and putting his other hand on his daughter's leg to try and comfort her. "You can't what, Katie?"

"Do this without him." She says, her fear, her absolute terror and dread finally flooding her as the tears fall down her face. "I can't do it without him. He needs to be _here- _with me. I don't know how to do it alone."

Jim tries to make sense of it, but can't. He shakes his head and pinches his brow, his hand falling off her shin. "Sweetie, what are you talking about?"

Kate finally manages to move her eyes up to look at her father and meet his worried gaze. "I'm pregnant."

Her dad's other hand falls off her elbow as his expression remains etched.

And her heart just seized up. "Come on," he starts, "let's get you up."

* * *

Her dad ushered her down the hall and outside to a patio area, where Kate is sitting at a table by herself, leaned over the table with her arms over her head.

"Here," Jim gets her attention. Kate moves her arms off her head and looks up, seeing her dad's soft, humble smile poisoned with a hint of worry behind it as he sets a bottle of water in front of her. "I uh..." he starts as he pulls out the metal chair next to her and sits down, "I didn't get you coffee for obvious reasons."

She just answers with a nod of her head, twists to cap off, but doesn't move to drink from it. She feels so damn broken. In a way she's never felt before. Even when her mother died was she this shattered and useless. Through the argyle pattern of the table top, she can see the heart he drew on her thigh.

There was a time when she hated him for telling her he loved her that day. A time during her recovery when she made up her mind to push him away for the betterment of herself and her life, when she decided that it was just safer for her to go it alone. A time when she just couldn't understand what could have brought him to tell her something like that then of all times.

But now...

Now she just wants to tell him how much she loves him over and over again. Now, she understands exactly what brought him to say it. And she hates herself for thinking pushing him away was the right thing to do.

"So," her dad starts for both of them, "when did you find out?"

Kate looks into the bottle of water in her hands. "Yesterday... when I was in holding at the station." She explains, her voice low, weak, and drained. "Running DNA and a drug test on suspects is routine so long as they have a warrant and they had one." She can feel her dad's eyes on her, and she can't help but feel them look on her with a bit of judgment. She knows how much her dad worried, and probably still worries, about her wild child phase, about her running off with some bad boy and coming home pregnant, or worried about how many nights she went home with a stranger she met at some bar in Manhattan just for the fun of it. No father would accept his daughter living that kind of life... no good father anyway.

And in truth, she didn't. There was a time during her late teens that she thought about it, when she didn't take life seriously at all, before her mother died. Even a brief time after when she just wanted something or someone to use to numb anything she felt. But when she entered the academy, that all changed. After putting on the badge, she had a purpose and no room for anything or anyone else.

"Is..." Jim starts in a tight, anxious tone, "is Rick the father?"

Kate hangs her head, knowing what made her dad ask that. This is what she meant when she told Rick she could have been a much better daughter. "Yes."

Her dad breathes an audible sigh of relief and looks down to the table. "I'm sorry, Katie, it's just uh..."

Kate closes her eyes and nods her head slowly. "I know, Dad... I know." She says for him, looking down to her lap as she leans forward in shame. "I know I could have been a better daughter."

"No, sweetie," Jim says quickly and leans over to her, putting a hand on her forearm, gaining her attention. "That's not what I meant at all. I just didn't know you and Rick were back together for that long. I thought that-"

"Yeah..." she says and looks back down to the table. "We weren't." She pauses, remembering the night that their angry argument gave way into fighting with each other with sex. "it was the night you were gone on that seminar for the shop. Castle and I had made a date for that night to talk about things and he stood me up, but I found him at the diner with Sierra. So he followed me home and we got into an argument." She quickly explains, sparing as many of the details as she can. "And it just sort of... ended up happening."

They both fall into silence as her heart gets heavier. "So... you're only a couple of days along?"

She nods her head heavily. "The ME said if he had done the test any sooner, it wouldn't have shown up." She explains. "He said five... maybe six days at most."

"And..." Jim says, not wanting her to break down again, "Rick... doesn't..."

She saves him by shaking her head. "No." She answers with a shake returning to her voice. "I was going to wait until we were on solid footing again... after the case was closed and we were focused on us again. And I tried," she says on a big breath she took to try and steady herself to no avail, "to tell him but... h-he..."

"It's okay," Jim interjects. "It's okay, honey, I understand."

Kate shakes her head again as tears start to fall. "Dad," she begins, reaching up to clutch the engagement ring hanging under her shirt, "I wanted him to marry me because he loved me." She admits, looking over to her dad. "I wanted him to marry me because he wanted us to be together for the rest of our lives, not because I'm the mother of his child. I wanted him to put this engagement ring on my finger because he loved me."

"Katie, that can still happen." He suggests.

"Dad, I don't even know if I'll have the chance to tell him!" She says in a voice dripping with emotion as it wells back up like a geyser. "My child could come into the world without the _best _father they could have and..." she has to stop as tears sting her eyes, "and he could never even get the chance to know he's even going to be a father again."

"Well," Jim starts and reaches back over, putting an encouraging hand on her arm, "let's find out. Come on."

* * *

After they both stand up and make their way back inside, her dad goes off to find a bathroom as Kate approaches the corridor near the entrance to the ER.

"It's not your place to say that, Alexis." She hears a male voice say, making her stop.

"Well, I mean it!" Alexis hisses angrily. "I wish he'd never met her." She continues in a low growl. Kate's heart sinks into her stomach like a rock as she turns and leans against the wall. "None of this would have happened if it wasn't for her."

"That's not your place to decide." The guy says to her.

"Ethan, my dad is _fighting for his life _because of her!" Alexis growls.

"Your dad is fighting for his life because of the person that stabbed him and _only _because of the person that stabbed him. And the more you blame her for this, the harder you make it on both of you and easier for the person that's responsible for this."

Kate feels empty, hopeless. She didn't want Alexis to hate her. "Are you saying this shouldn't be difficult for me?!" Alexis hisses to him.

"I'm saying," the guy continues in a calm voice, "that you should realize that you're not the only person who's going through something traumatic right now."

"That's my _father _in there, Ethan!" She says in a low, angry voice.

"Yes, and you need to realize that you're not the only person your dad cares about in his life." When Kate expects Alexis to continue fighting, all she hears is silence. "You and her are going through something entirely different, Alexis, because you never chose to love him." Kate feels her heart skip at her boyfriend's words, because in a way, she didn't really have a choice either. "If what you told me about her is true, this is just as hard on her as it is on you."

"Then why isn't she out there finding whoever did this?" Alexis asks in an emotional voice.

There's a pause in their conversation as Kate has to close her eyes and look up to the ceiling to stop the tears. "Is it her job any more than it is yours?" He asks.

"So what, I should... I should help her when I'm going through the most difficult thing in my life?"

"No," he answers calmly, "what I'm saying is that you shouldn't make it any more difficult by blaming her for any of it and leave the helping up to me, now..." he says with a lift in his voice, "is there anything I can do?"

Alexis shakes her head and sets into her boyfriend's arms, wrapping her arms around his chest and laying her head down onto his shoulder. "Not yet."

"Alexis?" Kate finally musters up after turning the corner. Both Alexis and her boyfriend separate and look over to her, her boyfriend with a calm, wondering expression and Alexis with wide, emotionally hazy eyes. "Sasha, she..."

Alexis steps out of her boyfriend's arms a step. "What happened with Sasha?"

Kate takes a soothing breath at that, at least knowing that Alexis will put whatever feelings she has aside when something is wrong. "She broke herself off her lead when your dad was-" she cuts herself off, not wanting to explain it. "I didn't have time to get her back in the house when the paramedics came and she went running after the ambulance."

Alexis quickly turns back around to her boyfriend who quickly gives her a nod. "I'll handle it."

"Thank you," Alexis says as she leans up to give her boyfriend a light, chaste kiss before he turns and jogs out of the hospital, leaving Kate to lean back around the corner of the hallway. Alexis turns back to look over to her after a moment and stares at her. After a few seconds of the two women looking at each other Alexis takes a step forward with a sunken expression on her face. "Gram's trying to get a flight down but there's a thunderstorm in New York so she thinks it might be a while before she's in the air."

All Kate can do is nod and look down to the floor, crossing her arms over her stomach.

There's another thick pause between the two for what feels like a couple minutes before Alexis is breaking the silence again. "The nurse says they don't know when he'll be out of surgery."

Kate looks back up to her and can just nod, trying to convey understanding and probably failing.

"Me and Ethan talked about... going to the vigil they're having tonight in the square for Sierra if there isn't any news. My dad told me he wanted to go." Kate waits, but doesn't want to get her heart set on it. Maybe staying here and waiting for news while they go to the vigil will get her some time to think if she Alexis needs to know or not. Or maybe come up with excuses to not tell anyone else before she absolutely has to. "Did you want to come?"

Kate looks up from the floor and up to Alexis, her heavy heart warmed for the first time in what feels like her whole life. "Sure."

* * *

_A/N: What'd ya think? Felt like a slow chapter to write, honestly. _


	45. Chapter 45

Is this what he went through? Is this how he really felt? The emptiness, the helplessness, the hopelessness?

As she slowly strokes the engagement ring hanging around her neck, the small heart drawn on her thigh barely visible in the low, orange light the streetlights provide, a life that had him in it just feels like an old movie she saw as a kid enough times where she could recite every line from memory, still laughs at all the jokes she's heard a thousand times, still feels her heart swell at every sweet moment she's seen a thousand times. It's like her soul has been caved in. And every time she thinks about it, her arms still feel the weight of his body in them in the exact moment when he went limp.

How did he get over this? She remembers going back to the precinct after recovery and talking to Ryan and Esposito. She remembers dodging their questions when they told her that he was there with them every day working the case. Until...

God, she wasn't even going to see him if it wasn't for that file.

She feels another wave of hot tears well up in her eyes as she looks down to her thigh. She doesn't deserve this heart he drew for her, this ring hanging around her neck.

They were there. She knew it. They were finally at a place where they could accept their mistakes, allow them to make them better people for each other, and forge a new future together. Now, she's back to dwelling on them, wishing she could go back and admit from day one that she was attracted to him just so have more time with him.

Kate shakes her head, trying to muster up some courage from the pieces of her soul that litter the pits of her stomach, slips the ring back under her shirt, pushes on the door to her dad's car and steps out onto one of the streets leading to the square. She can see people gathered from here, Alexis's boyfriend's truck parked just ahead on the other side of the street after they went on ahead of her. It's dark, around seven-thirty, a little cold, and the whole town is quiet. There's not even any ambient noise of traffic in distant streets, or even chatter coming from the crowd ahead of her. Everyone is quiet, shut down, in mourning.

Her heart feels weighted more and more with sadness the closer she gets to the crowd scattered around the park. She can hear some people crying, can see some other groups gathered in small groups with each others hand on one another's shoulders in support as they pray, husbands being a strong shoulder for their wife as they walk toward the center of the vigil to leave flowers or light a candle, mothers holding their children in their arms to quietly explain what's going on. She can hear people ask about their jobs and how things are going at the local steel mill and how someones child is liking University of Oregon as opposed to their bitter rivals, Oregon State.

This is what a community looks like.

She spots Alexis, nestled in her boyfriend's side with her head down on his shoulder off to the right in the back of the crowd. Kate watches as a woman around her age hands her a small white candle from a basket and accept it with a smile before the woman walks off to keep passing out candles. She doesn't know anyone here. She recognizes a few faces from the store, remembers a few names and could probably act like a normal member of this community of she had to. But right now, she just feels like an outsider. Alexis is at best indifferent with her.

So Kate just stands in the very back of the gathering crowd, inwardly hoping she won't get noticed by anyone. What is she even doing here?

It's just then that she feels someone touch her left shoulder. She turns to see Beth with tears running down her face, with her twin sister right beside her. "Beth," Kate says, looking between the two. "Hi."

Beth's eyes glimmer with the candle lights from the vigil as she dips her head and steps forward, wrapping Kate up in a hug. Her heart skips at the act, and she's frozen when Barbra steps up behind her to wrap her arms around her also. She's drawn out of herself for a moment, stunned by the show of support and friendship that she doesn't feel at all deserving of. After Beth and Barbra tighten their arms around her, Kate moves her arms around them to return the gesture.

The man she loves is fighting for his life.

But they lost someone. Sierra was adored by this community, people loved her.

The women separate as Beth tries to constrain her emotions and looks over to Kate. "We never thought it was you, Kate." She says in a soiled voice.

Kate nods her heads with an honestly thankful smile. "Thank you, Beth."

"We heard about what happened." Barbra says.

Beth looks back over to Kate with big, sad eyes. "We all did. We're _so sorry." _She says, reaching forward and taking Kate's hands. Kate nods thankfully and honestly.

"How's he doing?" Barbra asks her.

Kate's heart sinks again. "He's uh..." she tries, "he's still in surgery. My dad's waiting at the hospital so his daughter and I could come."

The sisters smile warmly and give her a gesture of comfort as the woman handing out candles comes around and hands one to Beth and Barbra before meeting Kate's eyes and handing her one. She takes it with a heavy, thankful smile as the straight haired blonde woman looks her in the eye for a few seconds before looking back down to the basket hanging from her arm and slowly walks off to keep handing out candles.

Kate stands looking down to the ground as everyone in the square begin to light their candles, the whole park getting illuminated with flickering lights. It's then that her whole being begins to sink. Somewhat of a dark symbol, a grim reminder that seemingly everyone else's candle is lit but her's. Everyone else around her has a light to cling to, to guide them, to symbolize that spark of life everyone has in them. But the wick of her candle is still cold.

But after a moment, she feels someone touch her right arm. She turns and sees Alexis standing there with her candle lit and a soiled smile, the light of the flame making the tracks of her tears shine. Alexis moves her candle forward and passes the flame onto Kate's candle, meeting her eyes with a soft smile.

The two meet eyes and share a silent moment of understanding, of support, of thankfulness. Kate looks down to her candle as the flame flickers gently with the breeze. "Thank you."

Alexis nods as she reaches behind her to grab her boyfriend's arm, pulling him up and putting his arm back around her waist. "You make him happy."

Kate smiles heavily and looks down, averting her eyes back to her candle, putting her other hand over her stomach. "He's..." she starts, the engagement ring getting heavy around her neck, "he's the love of my life."

She can feel Alexis look over to her as she nestles herself back into her boyfriend's side. "You're his too."

Kate smiles as the warmth of the candle gets closer, her heart starting to rise for the first time in what feels like her entire life. And as they fall into silence, Kate turns toward the vigil and takes a step closer to Alexis, looking down at her candle.

* * *

"Did you find Sasha?" Kate asks her as they walk away from the vigil.

Alexis shakes her head as her boyfriend walks ahead of them toward his truck. "He looked but he couldn't find her. Sasha's a wanderer, so she could be anywhere." Kate sighs heavily, thinking about Rick's beloved companion alone, scared, missing her master, cold. "We're heading back to the hospital, if you wanted to come."

"Actually," Kate says, "if you don't mind, I'd... like to head back to your house." Alexis looks over to her with a slight quirk in her brow. "I know how he feels about Sasha and if she does come wandering back around the house, I'd like to catch her."

"Are you sure she'll come to you?" Alexis asks.

But Kate smiles to herself. "First time he lead her off her lead, she ran right to me, so..."

Alexis agrees and heads over to her boyfriend's truck, promising to let her know as soon as she knows something, while Kate goes to her dad's sedan and makes her way back through town in a daze, heading down the same route that she takes every day toward his house. As she pulls to a stop along the curb, just as she's done every morning for the past two months, there's a tight clenching her body when she looks up to the opening to the path she sees him walk out of every morning. And as she steps out of the car, she looks over to the set of chairs and table sitting under the oak tree that they've met at every morning.

They've fought for so much, for so long, they've dug up and smoothed over so much. They've gotten so angry with each other for words they said and didn't say to each other, apologized for the ones they did and said the ones they had to. It was underneath that oak tree that they rediscovered their love for one another. And in the stillness of the chilly night, hearing the water lap against the shore nearby, she walks over to the tree they've met under and reaches under her shirt to pull out the engagement ring. She stops beside her chair and looks down to the engagement ring on the necklace with her mother's ring hanging below it.

When the moonlight catches the diamonds of the band, she feels her heart swell and looks up.

She can see him standing in front of her with some big grin on his face, dressed in a perfectly cut tuxedo. She can feel herself wearing a beautiful, elegant wedding dress, telling him how much she loves him, how fighting to get him back and fighting for them was the hardest battles she's ever fought, but that it's lead her to this and she'd do it again if his love was at stake. She could see herself getting married here... right here, underneath this oak tree.

Kate shakes herself out of her thoughts, slips the necklace back under her shirt, and slowly heads through his yard, up the steps, and opens the front door.

On a long, anxious breath out, she looks around the darkness of his home and steps inside just as she hears someone rush up the steps behind her and feels herself get slammed in the back by a set of charging hands.

"_Rah!" _She hears someone grunt.

"_Uh!" _Kate grunts, flying forward and landing on the floor face first. Her adrenaline spiking violently, she spins around on the ground just in time to see a dark figure come rushing at her through the entrance with a knife. Her heart stops when the figure quickly rushes down toward her with the blade of the knife facing downward. She rolls off to the side just as the figure's blade jabs into the carpet.

"_AH!" _She hears the woman scream in anger as she stabs the floor.

She reacts as quickly as she can and kicks her foot back as hard as she can to the figures side. The woman falls away, giving Kate the opportunity to swing her body around on the floor and kick the knife away from her reach before she can grab it again.

"_Raaaah!" _The woman cries out as she gets up off the floor and charges at her. Kate puts her leg up to kick the woman away, but the woman pushes it out of the way and lands on top of her, wrenching her fists in her army green t-shirt, pulling her up and slamming her body back down to the floor, moving on top of her. "_Ruhhh..." _The woman growls like an animal as she looms over her.

"Mmm..." Kate groans, sending her fist into the woman's side as hard as she can, making the woman buckle. Kate uses it to move her leg out from under her and force her off of her, sending her rolling into the coffee table. Kate quickly scrambles to her feet and puts distance between them, moving through the living room and over toward the dining area. The woman gets to her knees and looks up at Kate with fury in her eyes. "Who the hell are you?" She asks.

The woman stares up at her for a moment, panting angrily. "You don't recognize me, do you?" She growls, her teeth clenched.

Kate pants, her muscles flaring. "Lady, you have no idea how much I have going on right now. Remembering all the faces of the people that want me dead isn't exactly worth my time."

"_Mmmmaaahh!" _The woman yells as she makes another charge at her. But Kate steps to the side and grabs the woman by hood of her black sweater and swings her around. The woman pivots and shoves her side into her, forcing Kate against the wall next to the fireplace and puts her hands on her collar, forcing Kate to look at her. "_You killed the man I love!"_ She screams in her face.

It's then that Kate recognizes her and feels everything drain. "You..." she pants as she looks into the woman's eyes. "You're the one in the video, the agent they used to stage the murder."

"_MMmm!" _The woman groans as she pulls Kate from the wall and tries to toss her to the ground but failing when Kate regains her footing near the door, knocking over the stand of fireplace tools as she does. "_I loved him!" _She cries, the woman's voice thick and soiled and hot, angry tears. "You ruined my _whole life!" _

"You don't think I regret what I did?" Kate asks her in a dark tone.

"_Ahhh!" _The woman screams and charges her again.

Kate cements herself and stops the woman with a quick shove of her arms and twist of her hips, sending the woman off to the side and onto the ground, landing on her back. "Lady, your boyfriend drew a gun on me." She says as the woman looks up to her. Meeting the woman's eyes, Kate's fury is ignited in a way it hasn't been in a very long time. Her teeth grinding, she clenches her fists. "But you stabbed the man I love in cold blood." She hisses. "You killed two innocent people."

"_You ruined my life!" _The woman screams again. "After the staging and you went after him, someone at the AG's office decided to start digging into Ben's life. They found out about him, about who he was selling his secrets to, and when they found out about us, they came after me. And because Ben wanted us to go away together and left me money to do it for safekeeping, they labeled me a traitor and sent a _strike team after me!" _The woman seethes and grabs the knife sitting at her side and makes another charge at her.

Kate tries to react to disarm her, but the woman forces Kate back and slams her against the wall, putting the blade to her neck.

"You were supposed to be in jail, you stupid _bitch!" _The woman spits in her face.

Kate locks up as the cold steel of the knife lines up along her neck. "Is that why you killed Nancy Carlson?"

"Everyone at the AG's office knows about you. And after finding out about you and that writer, figured them catching you investigating a murder with him would make them arrest you." The woman explains in a dark voice.

"And when that didn't work, you killed Sierra and tried to frame me." Kate continues.

"I had _everything _planned out!" She spits through clenched teeth. "Your boyfriend just had to go and pull off a miracle." She says angrily, shaking her head.

"Trust me, he's pretty good at it." Kate adds, the woman responding by pressing the blade into Kate's neck with a bit more force.

"But if I can't get _you _to pay, then at least I can put you through what you put me through." She says with emotion soiling her tone. "But since he's not dead..." she starts in a shaky tone, "he's going to be the one to know what it's like to lose someone they love instead."

Kate shivers as the woman moves the blade against her neck and raises her arm just as a different set of footsteps come racing up the stairs.

"_Rah-rah-rah!" _Sasha barks angrily, bolting up the steps and through the door before jumping in the air, teeth first, and latching onto the woman's arm, dragging her down to the floor.

"_Ahhhh!" _The woman screams as Sasha begins to thrash her arm around with her teeth wildly, growling.

Kate reacts as quickly as she can as the woman tries to fight Sasha off and grabs the fire poker on the floor. In one swift motion, Kate grabs the poker in both hands and swings it through the air with both hands. "_Rahhhh!" _She screams.

The fire pokers curved hook lands square in the woman's temple and Kate stumbles over her, rolling onto the floor until her back is leaning against the leg of the dining room table, panting heavily.

Kate sits on the floor with tears running down her face as the woman lays on the floor lifeless, blood splattered her face, and the fire poker laying on her head. After a moment of staring at the woman, her panting quickly giving way into choked sobs, she feels Sasha press her nose against her hand and slowly walk up to her.

As Kate fights the sobs overcoming her, she reaches over and grabs onto her fur with both hands, pulling herself over and leaning against Sasha's back. Sasha whimpers happily and at the sound, Kate sobs again and wraps her arms around Sasha's neck, burying her face into the softness of her fur. "Thank you."

* * *

_A/N: Long time coming, I know! How many of you guessed the killer? _


	46. Chapter 46

It's barely morning. The sky is just coming out of darkness, what little of it she can see from the mostly deserted police station. And she's tired.

God, she's tired.

Sitting in a chair next to a random officers desk in handcuffs, she wants to fall asleep, but every sound sparks a light of anticipation that someone is actually coming around to tell her what's going on. The police arrived at the scene around five minutes with their guns drawn as they entered the house. She was still on the floor, cuddled around Sasha with silent tears dripping down her cheeks with a dead body of an unidentified woman sitting on the floor in front of her. With her already being a suspect for murder before, naturally, they arrested her.

She sat in the back of a police cruiser in handcuffs while they carried the woman's body out of the house in the dead of morning. She could hear Sasha barking up a storm until Alexis arrived at the news. She couldn't talk to her before the Chief came up to the car, opened the door, asked her to give her statement to him again that she gave the officers that arrived at the scene, then told them to take her to the station. She was sat down in this chair when she got here and left alone until now.

At this point, after everything she's been through, she just wants to go to sleep. Maybe see him in her dreams. She can get the feeling of his body making love to her again instead of dying in them. Alexis is probably back at the hospital, they've probably gotten news by now. Maybe he's awake and looking for her. He could be asking about her right now and all Alexis knows is that she went home and found her in the back of a police car and a body being wheeled out of his house.

With her necklace wrapped around one hand, her fingers petting the engagement ring around it in a slow, steady motion and her other hand tracing the heart on her thigh, she sits, slumped down in the chair just waiting for something to happen.

She lets out a heavy, very tired sigh and closes her eyes.

Giving up coffee is going to be rough.

"Ahem..." someone clears their throat on the other side of the room.

Kate lethargically pulls open her eyes and sees Chief walking into the station with a cup of coffee in his hand. "If you're going to arrest me again, can you at least put me in holding so I can go to bed?" She asks in a snarky attitude.

Chief cracks a grin and takes a sip of his coffee and a case file in the other. "I'm sorry, Kate." He says and turns to head through the desks. "You don't mind if I call you Kate, do you?"

Kate just shrugs her shoulders and blinks tiredly. "I'm too tired to observe formalities too, Chief. I just want to get to the hospital."

Chief nods and grabs onto a chair and slides it in front of her, sitting down, setting his cup down on the desk behind him, and flipping the file open. "I just uh... need you to repeat your statement." He says, leaning forward.

Kate rolls her eyes and would pinch the bridge of her nose if she wasn't cuffed. "I didn't do anything wrong, Chief. For the last time, I was acting in self-defense."

Chief just keeps himself leaned forward on his knees, looking down at the open file in his hands. "Kate, you would no believe the amount of hoops this whole thing is making me jump through." He says in a low, impatient tone that rumbles with a bit of gruff, giving her a moment before looking up to her with his head still down to the file. "I am tired, I have been on my feet for two and a half days, and now I have two or three different law enforcement agencies ready to knock down my door as of last night. I almost threw my voice out yelling at the goons wanting to take Castle's dog after they read the report, so _please_..." he almost growls before lifting his head and smiling pleasantly at her, "I _just _need you to give me your statement... _one _more time."

Kate looks into Chief's eyes for a moment, feeling guilty. She's been in that place before. After a moment, she nods and scoots herself up in the chair to sit up. "Okay, I was... leaving the vigil last night. Castle's daughter and her boyfriend were going back to the hospital and I said I was headed back to his house because Sasha pulled herself out of her collar that morning when he was stabbed and we hadn't had any luck finding her, so I thought I'd see her on my way. After I got there, I went inside and this woman pushed me from behind and attacked me with a knife."

"Did you fight?" Chief asks her as he flips a page.

Kate nods tiredly. "I managed to disarm her and get away and that's when she admitted to killing Nancy and Sierra to try and get me arrested."

"Any idea why?" He asks, much in the same, seemingly uninterested tone as before as his eyes remain down on the file laying open in his hands.

But Kate shakes her head, not wanting to get herself in trouble for telling the truth. "No." That's when Chief looks up to her without lifting his head and stares her down for a moment. She tenses up for a second before he flips the page again. "She said that she stabbed Castle after he cleared me for Sierra's murder, but came after me when she heard that he was in surgery."

Chief nods and lifts up another piece of paper. "Okay," he murmurs. "How'd she wind up dead?"

Kate swallows nervously and continues. "She grabbed the knife off the floor, charged at me, pinned me to the wall, and put the knife to my neck... said she was going to kill me. That's when Sasha came running through the door and jumped and latched onto her arm, pulled her to the ground. After that, I grabbed the fire poker and just..." she says, seeing the moment and feeling everything in her drain. Even when she knows there was really no other option, when the person deserves it, it's still haunting. "Swung."

Chief nods in a wide, animated fashion, lifts up another page of the file for a second, and nods again. "Okay," he says quickly, slaps the file close, and stands up. "You're free to go." He says and reaches for the keys on his belt.

Kate sits forward and lifts up her wrists as he unlocks the cuffs. "Wait..." she starts, looking up to him with a pinched brow, "what?"

Chief hangs the cuffs on his middle finger by the center chain before letting them fall down to the desk behind him. "Far as I'm concerned, Kate, you acted in self-defense. Now, I would say whatever happened beyond that is above my paygrade, but anyone who becomes a cop for the paygrade is either stupid or crocked. But, as Chief of the Crestfield police department, I was put in charge of two murder cases and an attempted murder, all of which are now closed, thank God. And the best part is, with all the suited up feds fighting over the body and all the classified hoopla that it was wrapped in, I don't have to do any of the paperwork." Kate laughs with the first natural smile she's felt on her face in ages. "You're free to go, Kate, and now, if you'll excuse me," Chief says, grabs the file and puts it under his arm, giving her a sharp nod, "I'm going into my office and take a nap."

Kate smiles as the Chief struts through the empty police station and closes the door to his office. And when left to her thoughts, everything about the murders and conspiracies and plots put to rest, she feels her heart swell anxiously. It's then that she looks down to her left thigh and sees the dried blood on still painted on her light denim jeans, the heart he left her. There's an amazing man in the hospital who loves her.

She reaches up to clutch the ring under her shirt before looking up to the entrance and heads for it as quickly as she can on very tired legs. She's been waiting to just focus on him since that first afternoon of them laying in bed just before they got the news of Sierra. She's been wanting to get their lives aligned to where they could just dive into it together again, without any distractions at all, where they could just spend time together, just the two of them, learning and exploring just how deeply they love each other and what they love about each other and how strong that connection can get, just the two of them.

But when Kate pushes the door to the station open, she puts a hand over her stomach and hesitates before a smile forces its way onto her face. Three...

Kate gives into the smile for a second as she lets an almost excited giggle escape her throat when she steps outside in the early morning sun. Kate looks up and sees the streets mostly calm and empty, the ambient noise of the town silent and still. The sky is so pink and clear as the sun rises for the morning, it's so calm and peaceful, so bright and happy here. Their child would love growing up out here. They are going to love it.

When Kate takes her eyes off the sky and looks over the streets, she sees a dark sedan parked along the other side of the street opposite of the police station, the windows almost totally tinted. Her heart freezes for a second before she sees the headlights flash off and on in a quick, timed rhythm. After the clench passes, her heart falls into bitter impatience and her teeth soon start grinding. They just won't ever leave her alone, will they? She'll always belong to them or owe them in one way or another, won't she?

On a huff, she makes her way across the street, flings the passenger side door open and falls inside before looking over to see which agent they sent after her. She looks across to the driver seat and feels herself stop when she sees Rachel McCord behind the wheel, dressed in dark slacks, a dark blazer, and a light blue button-up blouse, her head hung low and her expression sunken as she looks down to her badge sitting in her lap.

Kate sighs impatiently, brings her legs inside the car and closes the door silently, putting a long, tense moment of silence between them as she waits for McCord to start. She was always in the lead while Kate just tagged along, always in the back. It was always a weird feeling after having Castle tag along with her for that long. But during that tense moment of silence, Kate's brain is working out the details. And she's getting more furious with ever dot she connects. If she's here...

"How long have you been watching us?" She says in a low voice.

There's another moment between them when Kate feels McCord look over to her as she remains staring dead-eyed out the passenger window, just as she did the day she was let go from the AG's office. "About five days."

Kate clenches her jaw, her nails digging small crescents into her palms.

"Just before the murder of the ME."

"Sierra." Kate says very pointedly, whipping her eyes over to stare into McCord angrily. "She had a name, use it."

McCord just stares back at her for another long, silent moment before giving her a nod, turning back out the windshield, starting the car, putting it in gear, and driving off. After a block or two, with Kate staring out the window silently just as she did before, McCord looks over to her. "You're not going to ask?"

Kate clenches her jaw with impatience. "Are you here to arrest me?" She asks, knowing that's not what McCord was thinking.

McCord just shakes her head, her expression blank. "No, Beckett, you're not in any trouble." With that, Kate just looks back out the window again. "You weren't wrong, Beckett." She says after another block. "I want you to know that." Kate just remains silent. She just wants this part of her life gone. She wants to focus on different things. She wants to talk to him. He'd probably love to have a little girl again. "You weren't wrong."

"The bureau blacklisted me from law enforcement, McCord." She says pointedly, turning to look over to her again. "They threatened me with charges of treason."

When McCord doesn't answer and just keeps driving into town, Kate turns back out the window. "After you got fired, people started... they started talking." McCord continues in an anxious tone. "About you." Kate just rolls her eyes and doesn't respond. "They started using you as an example of what an agent wasn't supposed to be."

"And I'm sure you were right there along with them, too." Kate mutters to herself.

"They didn't know you, okay, Beckett?" McCord answers her in a firm voice, making Kate look over to her again. "I know this may surprise you, but you were still my partner." She says and looks back toward the road as they pull to a stop at a traffic light, but Kate keeps her eyes on McCord. "A few weeks ago, I got fed up with their attitude toward you and I started digging into Abdalla."

Kate blinks, not giving her any benefit of the doubt. "Under whose orders?"

McCord looks over to her. "No ones." She says and looks back to the road. " His real name was Ben Horowitz, but Hasan Abdalla had a P.O. box in DC in his name, so I opened it and found a drive. I brought it to the director and he agreed to open up an investigation on him."

Kate looks over to McCord, understanding begrudgingly making its way into her heart, softening her. "What about the woman that killed Sierra and stabbed Castle?"

McCord looks over the road as she makes a turn. "Her real name was Amy Danver." She starts. "We got onto her when she used your credit card to buy the rope at you and your father's shop."

"And because it was me, they sent you." Kate infers. McCord lets guilt come into her eyes as she refuses to look over to her. Kate feels her teeth grind again. "So..." she says with a shaking tone, "if you've been watching us, then you know what my next question is going to be."

McCord just keeps her eyes out the windshield as she slows down in the ambulance zone of the urgent care building.

"Why didn't you stop her?" She demands.

McCord just waits until she pulls to a stop in the parking lot of the hospital, pulls the keys out, and lets them fall into her lap to look down. "I was ordered to hold back." She says in a low, shame-ridden tone. "They wanted to see if she had Horowitz's contacts and was going to sell any info she had to them, so they ordered me to stand down."

Kate feels her teeth grind and fury boil up inside her. Getting fired was the best thing that could ever have happened to her. She decides to just shake her head and look out the window until she's let go.

"Beckett, you..." McCord starts in an emotionally honest tone that catches her attention. When Kate looks over, McCord is looking down to her badge, opened up in her lap. "You were right. We knew about Davers from the beginning and I was ordered not to stop her. And they said... they said what they always say and said it... that it was for the greater good. Well..." McCord trails off sadly, shaking her head as her eyes remain glued to her badge. "Maybe you were right that day. Maybe there isn't a greater good... and there's just right and there's wrong. You know, I remember telling you that day we moved you out of your apartment that if we're told to look the other way on things, that we have to know it's for a good reason."

Kate feels her anger subside when she notices the look in McCord's eye as she stares down to her badge.

"I listened to them and because of that, innocent people are dead." She says, her voice shaking. "Well, I can't do it anymore." She finishes and closes her badge and tosses it onto the dashboard before throwing herself back into her seat. Kate looks between McCord's discarded badge and her as McCord reaches up to wipe away the tracks of stray tears from her face. "Anyway, I'm here to tell you that uh... that the bureau is striking your name from the record. As of this morning, you never did anything wrong according the AG's office. And they're also lifting the ban on your practice of law enforcement, so... expect a call about getting your job back."

Kate nods, trying to be thankful but just not feeling it in her heart. "Thank you."

McCord looks over to her with a sad smile and nods toward her stomach. "Does he know yet?" Kate instinctively puts her hand over her stomach and shakes her head. "You should tell him."

Kate nods in a quick, tight motion. "I was planning on it."

McCord smiles and gives her a nod before motioning out the window, toward the entrance to the hospital. "Goodbye, Beckett."

Kate looks out the windows before turning to McCord with a soft smile. "I'm just Kate here, Rachel."

* * *

His eyes open slowly.

They hurt. They feel crusty and tired. The light hurts to look at to. His body feels so heavy and weak, and useless when he tries to move and can't move because he's just so numb and heavy. After a minute, he squeezes his eyes shut as hard as he can and pries them open to see he's staring directly into a set of fluorescent lights shining into his eyes.

He thought he was dead. He felt... dead.

He blinks before taking a quick survey of the room and seeing he's laying in a hospital bed with an IV hooked up invasively to his left arm and a big, ugly machine sitting to the right of his bedside. God, he hopes that machine isn't something keeping him alive. He doesn't want to be tied to a bed for the rest of his life. But as he pans the room from right to left, his eyes soon fall on the brunette sitting awkwardly in the chair along the left wall, slumped back with her legs sprawled out in front of her in a pair of light blue jeans and a charcoal sport coat draped over her, her hair back in a ponytail that hangs over her shoulder and her eyes closed.

He can live with being dead if she's here.

He feels himself smile when he sees her fast asleep and decides to just lay here and watch her. God knows how long she's been doing it. She looks exhausted.

After a few minutes, she stirs silently and he feels his heart swell joyfully. She's looks so sleepy, and tired... and beautiful, and warm, and peaceful, and strong. With every breath that the rise and fall the sport coat draped over her marks, he can feel himself falling more and more in love with her. He doesn't know how long he's been out, how long she's been here, if she just arrived or has been here for days, or months, or even years.

All he knows is that he loves her like a house on fire right now, she's here... and he doesn't want to waste any more time pretending otherwise.

He watches her dedicatedly for another few minutes before she stirs again and peeks her eyes open to look over to him for a split second and readjusting her head, tugging the charcoal sport coat up to her chin. Rick smiles brightly at seeing her beautiful hazel eyes just for that brief moment and turns his head over to her. But after another moment, her head pops up off the wall and her eyes snap over to look at him with a squint.

Rick just lifts his heavy hand up off the mattress and waves at her silently.

"Rick!" She cries happily and tosses the coat off her and rushes off the chair and over to his bedside. "Oh, Rick..." she says with those big, beautiful hazel eyes glimmering down at him like a goddess he'd wish to meet if this were his dying day. "Oh... babe..." She says and reaches over to his jaw and pulling him over gently by the scruff and puts her lips on his cheek in a firm, loving kiss that she lets linger on his skin. "You had me so worried."

Rick just smiles and lets himself float at the feeling of her lips on his skin as his eyes catch sight of her thigh through the metal bars of the hospital bed, where he sees a small dark heart drawn haphazardly on her thigh. It's then that the memories slowly come back to him. Rick slowly reaches through the sidebars of the bed and cups her thigh, his thumb finding the pattern of the heart as he smoothes the hardened denim over. He feels her lips brush against his cheek again just before she leans back, but his eyes remained fixed on the heart that he drew.

He doesn't know how long he's been here, how long she's been waiting, but he knows what this heart means.

It means he's through waiting, through letting fear of the future decide on whether or not he gets to have one, through wasting time waiting for a perfect time to start the perfect life for their perfect love story when she loves the imperfect him and he loves the imperfect her.

Rick takes his eyes off the heart and looks up to her with a soft smile, seeing tears fall down her face. He takes his hand off her thigh and lifts it a few inches off the surface of the bed before curling his fingers in silently.

Kate's brow pinches curiously at the motion. "What?"

Rick just nods his head and curls his fingers toward him again, gesturing for her to come to him. Kate just smiles and indulges him before slowly leaning over the bedside and closes her eyes, readying to kiss him again. But right as she does, she feels his fingers tickle the skin on her neck. Her eyes pop open and she sees his hand start to pull away, the thin chain of her necklace twisted around his finger. He pulls her necklace out silently and brings it as close to him as he can, his eyes looking down to the two rings that hang from it.

Her heart locks up when he flicks his eyes up to her with a soft smile and his fingers gently tug on the necklace twice. She lets out a shakey breath and reaches behind her neck to undo the clasp, and lets him take it in his hand.

This isn't... he just woke up, he doesn't know about it, he can't... "Rick, there's something I-"

"_Shh_hhh..." He stops her as he brings the necklace into his lap. "You're ruining the moment." He says in a low, tired, raspy voice.

She feels her entire body light up with violent butterflies as he drags the engagement ring off the chain with his finger and thumb, then moving to pool the necklace in a small puddle on the other side of the bed. He takes in a breath and holds the ring up to her, then meets her eyes.

"Rick, you're still-"

"I know..." he stops her when he hears her rushed, frightened tone, "what I'm doing." He says confidently. "Kathrine Beckett..." he starts and looks into her eyes as they brim with tears, "I'm madly in love with you." Her lungs stop letting her breath as her eyes burn, her face already streaming with tears. "Will you marry me?"

Her smile splits her face so much it hurts as her happy giggles light up her entire body. "Yes."

Rick smiles happily, finds her ring finger, and gently pushes the ring onto her finger with a snug fit, when he releases a very audible sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God, it fits."

"Perfectly!" She cries and leans over to him, kissing his lips firmly.

As they kiss, Rick reaches over and cups her thigh again to pet the small heart. "I love you, Kate."

Kate smiles brightly, nuzzling herself against him over the railing. "I love you too, Rick."

* * *

_A/N: Would you believe I've actually had this story planned out from beginning to end? I know that there have been very long hiatuses in this story and really, I do apologize for that. I do hope some of you will reread the entire thing, but if you don't, I totally get it. It's a rather long story. I truly have enjoyed writing it though. The epilogue is next, then calling it complete. _

_Now, I have three options in mind for my next project. I could either finish off Will of the Wisp, since I also had a pretty clear picture of where I wanted that one to go, rewrite Chasm from just a regular third person perspective like my others (the first person angel kind of dragged the story down a lot), or I could start something new, as I do have a new idea involving an ill-intentioned Caskett date and Rick having to go undercover in uniform at another precinct set in mid-late season 2. So let me know which you want to hear. _


	47. Epilogue: Part 1

_A/N: Upon request by a lot of people, I'm running the epilogue long for this one. Bare min, two parts. Let me know what you think of this part._

* * *

She heard the yells when her big spoon stirred and rolled away from her. Everyone heard the screaming.

At least that's what it feels like. Or sounds like.

She flips over in bed just as another loud shriek wails into their ears. He's already on his back and retrieving her pillow from under her head, reclaiming it as his right arm before turning in bed as the cries get louder. "Mmm..." he groans as he tosses the sheets off him.

But she reaches over and grabs his side, taking a fistful of his shirt to stop him from getting out of bed.

"Mmm!" He protests, tossing his sleeping arm out.

"No," She tells him in a groggy voice and tugs him onto his back then slowly rolls herself on top of him, putting her ear to his chest and nussling herself under his chin as they both wrestle with sleep. "Stay in bed."

The loud shrieking starts again over the speaker and he looks to his nightstand through the darkness of their bedroom. "Honey," he says to her, putting his hands on her sides, "as much as I would love to, there's a crying infant that is very politely asking one of us to attend to it."

Kate chuckles softly and moves her lips up his neck to tickle a kiss below his jaw that makes his entire body quake violently under her. "I'll do it, you stay in bed." With that, she tosses the covers off them and rolls herself off him and lands on her feet, sitting on the edge of their bed, pausing briefly to yawn. "You..." she speaks over it, "you need sleep, babe." She says with her eyes drifting shut again, reaching over and putting her hand in the hair on the side of his head blindly. "Big day for you today."

She moves to stand but feels him grab her hand when she gets to her feet, preventing her from going out the door to the infant that hasn't let up.

She looks back to the bed and sees him grinning at her with his face smashed into his pillow. "Rick, she's getting upset!"

He just grins brighter. "She's your family too, you know."

She fights her smile and takes her hand back. His arm falls off the side of the bed as he watches her go out the door of their bedroom just in time to hear someone steal her side of the bed. Her brisk walk down the hall turns into a light jog the louder the crying gets. "Coming, I'm coming!" She says quietly and pushes the door open to her room as the squirming ball of rage and impatience lets out another wail.

"Aww, come here." She says and reaches into the crib and takes the baby by the sides. "What's the matter, my little Lily bug?" She asks as she rests her on her shoulder, her loud banshee shrieks already dying down. "Huh?"

Lily starts bringing her temper tantrum to a close as soon as Mommy starts gently bouncing her, reaching up to rub her big hazel eyes with the back of her tiny little hands.

"Come on, Lily bug." She coos and moves over to the window of the nursery, what once was just an extra bedroom, and sits down in the wooden rocking chair, leaning back with her daughter resting comfortably in her arm. Lily squirms a bit, her limbs acting like gears of a clock for a moment before Kate lifts her shirt and lets her latch on. She looks out the window and begins to rock them back and forth in the rocking chair.

Lily coos and finally settles down and when she does, Kate does what she always does when she holds her baby girl in the rocking chair that her daddy surprised her with, she looks out the window and gazes out onto the lake. The stars are always bright enough to reflect so beautifully off the water and she can see the lake perfectly from the nursery. It's so beautiful here.

And her little girl is so beautiful, now sleeping soundly in her mother's arms, in her little yellow onesie. She never thought she could love anything as much as she loves this baby laying in her arms right now. He refused, adamantly, to explain or describe it to her. There were times when she was so upset with him because he knew how scared and nervous she was, how terrified she was when it finally dawned on her that she was actually bringing a new life into the world. But as she gazes down to the perfect little girl now fast asleep in her arms, then looks up to the picture sitting in the windowsill, she will always remember the feeling of all that terror and trepidation vanishing.

She put this picture on the windowsill for that very reason, to always remind her of those feelings just vanishing in an instant whenever she's sitting here in their rocking chair when Lily's putting up a fuss.

He snapped the picture at the perfect time, right in the instant when Lily's six pounds and three ounces was set in her arms for the very first time and Kate got to hold her daughter for the first time. She'd never fallen in love with anything so hard and so quickly since Lily's father came into her life, and it wasn't even a contest. And it isn't until Lily snorts so softly in her sleep and makes Mommy fight a giggle that she realizes that she was singing a soft song, just above a whisper.

Great, what put her daughter to sleep probably got her husband so worked up, she'll have to put him back to bed too, and Alexis won't forgive her because she kept her dad up so late that he fell asleep during the most important day of her life.

Kate slowly stands up from the rocking chair and moves back over to Lily's crib, setting her baby daughter back inside and kissing her fingers, then gently putting them on her cheek. "Goodnight, Lily bug."

She moves out of the nursery and down the hall, heading back toward their bedroom, where Perseus darts inside right as she opens the door and quickly makes for his favorite spot.

Kate stops to drink in the sight of her husband laying on his side with his head perched up on his hand and the biggest grin on his face, Sasha curled up in a ball behind him and sleeping like a lump right where Kate used to be, and Perseus making himself at home in the space between Rick's pillow and the headboard.

"You're supposed to be asleep." She says in a low voice and slowly heads back to bed.

Rick follows her with his eyes as she saunters around the other side of the bed. "You were singing." He defends himself and rolls onto his back and petting Sasha's back. "You know what happens when you sing."

"Yes," she strains as she attempts to crawl back under the covers with a giant dog in the way. "Lily falls asleep," she starts as Sasha finally gets the cue from Mom's legs and moves to the foot of the bed with a grunt, "and you get so worked up you can't get back to sleep."

"I'm sorry but you singing is sexy." He defends himself and props himself back upon his elbow, spinning around and turning to face her. "And you sang Whitesnake this time."

"It's not my fault Alexis and Ethan put his older brother in charge of the music at the reception last night. It got stuck in my head." She shrugs. "Now," she starts, reaching up and trying to push on his chest, "go to bed, Alexis will kill me if I keep you up all night."

Rick smiles, "Hun, I have a ten-month-old baby girl whose midnight shrieks have been mistaking for something living in the woods outside. I'm used to being up all night."

Kate rolls her eyes, "You know, you're lucky those baby monitors are one way and she can't hear you. That's our daughter you just insulted."

"Yes, I was lucky that my mother learned that lesson the hard way with me and besides, you agreed with me the first time we had to clip her nails."

She reacts quickly and smacks him in the side, hard enough to almost cross the line of being playful. "I thought we agreed that you wouldn't bring that up again." She whines.

"Yes, we did and I'm sorry," he says and scoots closer to her, "but we learned and lo and behold, you've become the best mother I've ever seen."

Kate smirks at him as he smiles down to her. "Careful Martha doesn't hear you saying that. Or have you forgotten that she's in town for Alexis's wedding?"

"Those were her words, hun, I just commandeered them." Kate rolls her eyes and fights a smile, shaking her head up toward the ceiling. "And besides, I think it's wise to prepare because tomorrow, you will get asked the all important question when they see our perfect little baby girl with her beautiful mother in her beautiful, elegant bride's maid dress."

Kate rolls her head toward him with an expectant smile. "Yeah? And what's that?"

Rick raises his brow and looks away, reaching up to pet Perseus, who's balled up on his pillow. "When's the next one coming?"

Her heart flutters inside of her and she can't help but smile more when she realizes that he can't seem to look her in the eye. "By who? The people at Alexis's wedding or just you?" When Rick looks away to the foot of the bed, acting like he's searching for Sasha, she smiles. "Rick?" She singsongs.

He finally gives her his eyes and his smile has faded into an anxious, scared look.

But Kate rolls onto her side to bring herself closer to him. "Rick, are we talking about having more kids?"

He finally reaches over, but hesitates before taking her hand. "Well, we never exactly _talked _about having Lily."

Kate shakes her head softly and reaches over to grab his hand, making the gesture for both of them. "Babe, I know that I sort of sprung it on you, but with everything going on at the time with your physical therapy, I didn't want to make things any more complicated."

"Honey, telling me that you were pregnant when I started going on about what kind of wedding I wanted for us was the best news you could have given me." He reassures her, making her smile again. "Getting married to you right outside underneath that oak tree was all I could ever want in a wedding."

Kate gives him a small nod and looks down to their hands as she starts to fiddle with his fingers. "I just didn't want to disappoint you because I wanted to still fit into a wedding dress."

"Upset me?" He starts with a raised brow. "Finding out that my fiance is two and a half months pregnant was like..." he shrugs with a wide smile, "was like getting to marry the woman of my dreams and finding out she was pregnant. Come on," he says excitedly, "let's have more kids."

Kate leans back slightly, taken aback at his excited reaction. "Really?" She asks in a laugh.

"Yes, you know how much I love Lily."

Kate smiles brightly and pets his wedding band with the tip of her finger. "Yes, I know."

"I mean, I've loved her ever since she was just the words 'I'm pregnant' coming out of the mouth of my fiance of just two weeks." He explains excitedly. "And I want to give her everything that I never had." He continues in much lower, tempered voice that catches her attention as she looks back up to him. She can see a hint of sadness creep into his features. "You know better than anyone on Earth how much I wanted a real family growing up."

Kate's heart tugs violently for her husband. She puts her hand over his on the surface of their bed and pets his knuckles with her thumb in a loving motion. "I know, babe."

"I..." he starts and turns his hand over under her's to entwine their fingers together, "I want Lily to grow up having the kind of childhood I daydreamed about when I was stuck at boarding school... give her a little brother or sister."

Her soft smile brightens across her face and she's already giving him a nod.

"And uh..." he continues, "I'm going to go ahead and be the first one to say this to you so you can be mad at me and not your mother-in-law or anyone else at Alexis's wedding tomorrow and remind you that... well, neither of us are getting any younger, hun."

She feels her smile soften and moves to close the gap in between their bodies, putting her arm around him and easing him onto his back and laying on top of him. "Okay," she says softly as he snakes his arms around her midsection. "When Lily turns three... we'll start trying." She tells him and sees a spark of excitement glint in his blue eyes. "Deal?"

He smirks. "Deal."

"But," she starts and moves her hands down his body and down his sides as she applies her full weight down on top of him, "in the meantime, I think we should get in some practice."

"Mmm..." he growls, his hands pulling on her thighs, "I really love the sound of that."

She bites down on her lip as she smiles, leaning down to press her forehead down to his. "I really love _you._"

He captures her face splitting smile with a slow, loving kiss.

Just as another cry sounds over the baby monitor.


	48. Epilogue: Part 2

_A/N: You know, as I bring this story to a close, I really can't help but look back on those salty reviews I got between chapters 6 and 10 or so saying "I'm not reading anymore because this story can't have a happy ending" and just laugh. I want to thank everyone that stuck by this story and stayed to watch it unfold the way it did. You guys are awesome._

* * *

It's... been... forever.

It's light outside. They should be awake right now.

With a blink and a readjustment of her knees on the carpet, she clutches the blanket and rests her face into the edge of their bed.

She waits another entire minute for something to move, but he doesn't even budge. Okay, it's _really _light outside, they should be up right now. She blinks again and shuffles impatiently against the floor with her knees, never breaking her stare off his face. She feels Sasha's nose sniffing her and she shakes her head when she feels it tickle and puts her hand against her head and nudges her away, petting her on the head a few times.

Maybe he heard that.

...Nope.

"Hmmmmmph!" She groans, getting mad, shuffling her knees against the carpet again as she stares directly at Daddy's face, just inches away.

Why aren't they awake yet?! Groan-ups are weird.

But Daddy's been fighting a face splitting smile ever since he heard the jangle of Sasha's tags come into the room. He always knew Sasha was protective and she's saved enough lives of the people he loves to prove it, and a little matter of his wife, his two-year-old daughter, a walk along the lake, and a very angry goose that Sasha had to chase away from Lily was enough to convince Sasha that the little girl was to be her best friend. She slept in her room that night and he moved Sasha's bed from downstairs up into her room, where she sleeps every night.

But that adorable groan he heard was just too much. He cracks one eye open and peers over to her to find her staring directly at him with her big, bright hazel eyes just poking over the side of the bed with Sasha sitting next to her. She blinks a few times and wiggles from side to side, clutching their comforter in her hands. He lets his smile blossom on his face and turns into his bed, feeling his wife's arm draped over him from behind.

"Mmm, what're you doing up so early, huh?" He asks on a whisper as he stretches his muscles under the covers and opens his eyes back up to look at her.

Lily stays silent and puts her arm up in the air above her then points her finger down to Sasha's head, then moves it over to her own, still looking over to him with those big eyes of her's.

Rick smiles, laughing silently at her cuteness, then looks back over to her, resting his head back on his pillow. "_You_, princess."

"Can't sleep." She rushes a whisper, clutching their blanket again.

"You can't sleep?" He asks her, raising his brow expectantly. Lily shakes her head in a wide motion, her ponytail tossing about like a whip at the speed. "What's the matter?"

"Too excited."

He lifts his brow and props himself up on his arm. "You're too excited." He says back softly and matter-of-factly. She nods wildly. "Well, what has you all excited, Lily bug?"

"Presents." She whispers back her answer quickly.

Rick smiles widely and nods, carefully climbing out of the covers and slowly bringing his legs off the side of the bed to have his daughter sitting on her knees on the floor, looking up at him with wide excited eyes. "Now," he whispers as he reaches for her, pulling her up as he stands, "what..." he starts as Lily settles on his arm, putting her arm around her father's shoulders, "in the world are you excited about presents for?" He feigns as he walks them over to the ajar door to their bedroom so he doesn't wake up his wife that looks so beautifully passed out laying on her stomach with her arm splayed out across his side of the bed.

Lily pouts angrily. "Daddy..."

He smirks back at her, feigns comical innocence, and bounces her on his arm. "Well..." he starts in a soft voice as he hears his wife stir in bed to lay on her side and tug the covers over her, "I know that big sissy's coming over this morning." He tells her knowingly, and it gets just the reaction he excepted and hoped for out of her. A big smile, a sparkle in her eyes, and an exciting jitter running through her body as she squirms around in his grasp. "And I know they're bringing over Eddy."

Lily stops and sucks in a big gasp, her eyes dancing wildly.

"And," he continues, looking over to his gorgeous daughter who's getting more and more excited, "I know they're planning on _doing _something with you." He starts, pretending to be unaware to tease her. "And that they're planning on spending the _whole _day with you... and then they're coming back here for..." he trails off, looking up to the ceiling, sticking his tongue out.

Lily giggles at Daddy's funny face and tugs on the collar of his t-shirt. "For presents!" She says in an excited, normal voice.

Rick lifts his fingers to her with a smile. "Shhh..." he gently shushes her, putting a finger over his lips. "Mommy's still sleeping, okay?" He whispers to her.

Lily puckers her lips, turns the lock on them and gives him a firm nod.

He smiles and leans forward, kissing his daughter on her cheek. "Happy birthday, princess."

Lily reaches up and puts her arms around Daddy's neck and hugs him, pressing her cheek to his face. He feels his heart swell at his little girl's sweetness and puts his other arm around her, holding her to him. "Loves you, Daddy."

He smiles brightly and pulls away. "You loves me?" She nods wildly as she smiles sweetly. "Do you _loves _Mommy too?"

"Yeah," she whispers, putting her finger between her teeth.

"Okay," he whispers back, leaning into her and looking over to his wife, still sound asleep. "I want you..." he whispers into her ear, "to go over... and tell Mommy that you love her and give her a kiss... then I'll take you downstairs for breakfast, okay? But-" he says quickly, pulling away to look at her before putting his fingers over his lips. "Be quiet."

Lily pinches her fingers in the okay sign, purses her lips together, and gives him a serious, hilarious glare.

He sets her down to the floor before quickly turning around, pulling the bedroom door open, stepping outside, and pulling it closed to hide behind it while Lily quietly creeps through their bedroom on her tiptoes and over to the bed. Rick grins as she climbs onto the bed.

As Lily makes it to the top of the bed, she carefully crawls over to her mother and leans in. "I loves you, Mommy."

Lily moves to place a sweet loving kiss on Mommy's cheek.

"_Ppbbbbbbt!" _Mommy surprises her with a loud, long raspberry getting blown onto her cheek, holding her to Mommy's lips as she wraps her arms around her and wrestles her down to the bed with a loud fit of excited giggles erupting from her. Rick's grin brightens as he watches the scene unfold. He can always tell when his wife is faking sleep. Kate wrestles her daughter onto her lap and sits up with Lily giggling happily in her arms. "What're you doing, sneaking up on Mommy, huh?" She asks the excited four-year-old.

"Ha, it was _Daddy!" _She laughs.

Kate gasps loudly, her eyes popping open and her brow shooting up. "It was _Daddy?!" _She asks, looking up to the cracked door that her husband is peering through.

"Daddy told me to sneak up on you!"

She gasps again and looks down to her little girl, pulling Lily closer. "Well, we should get Daddy _back, _shouldn't we?"

"Yeah!" Lily cries happily.

Rick quickly darts away from the door and hastens down the stairs, hearing Sasha gallop down the stairs behind him.

"Get Daddy?" Kate says as she grabs her daughter by her sides.

"Get Daddy!"

Kate lifts her daughter up as she flies out of bed, carrying her as she darts down the hall after him and then darts down the stairs, only setting Lily down to the floor when they've reached the living room, where he's facing them, huddled over Sasha whose standing between his legs looking up at him. Kate grins devilishly as she leans down to Lily. "Should we get Daddy?"

"Don't make me use this!" He says, holding Sasha's ears.

Lily just opens her arms with a smile, looking over to Sasha while Kate smiles and looks down with her. "Come here, Sasha!" Kate coos, pressing her face next to Lily's.

Sasha licks her snout and walks out from between his legs and goes over to Lily and immediately rolls onto her back. "You traitor!"

Kate looks back up to her husband, who's now standing there helpless and defenseless, grins a huge grin squeezes Lily's sides as shes petting Sasha's belly. "Let's get him, Lily bug!"

"Get Daddy!" Lily says excitedly and gets grabs up by her mother, who starts to slowly creep toward him.

"No, that-" he stammers and points at Sasha. "That was- I call mutiny! Daddy was sabotaged!"

"_Rah!" _They both cry out in unison and lurch forward, Kate latching Lily onto her father's neck like a trap before moving around and putting her own arms around him. They then quickly move to press their lips firmly to his each of his cheeks. "_Mwah!" _They both sound as they kiss him.

"Ah!" He cries as he puts one arm around his daughter latching onto his chest and the other around his wife.

"We love you, Daddy." Kate says to him when she feels him put his arm around her with a soft smile.

"No, today is _your _special day, princess." He says to his little girl.

"That's right!" Kate says and nestles herself into her husband's side, looking over to their daughter. "How do you feel about turning four, Lily bug?"

"Presents!"

"I already told you, princess, I don't know what you're talking about." Rick feigns with a soft smile.

"Well," Kate says, putting a hand on her husband's chest, "there _are _presents, but I had your big sister hide them at _her _house so little miss sticky fingers here wouldn't get any ideas."

"When are they coming over?" Lily asks.

Rick looks out the textured glass of the front door to see movement right before he hears an unmistakable howl outside, followed by Sasha scattering off the hardwood floor excitedly and running over to the door. "I do believe that that's them now."

The door opens and Eddy howls loudly to get to his favorite playmate, who's greeting Alexis first.

"Hi, Sasha," she says first before her husband pats their Siberian Husky on his neck to signal he has permission to go play. Eddy quickly gallops inside after Sasha and they quickly begin to wrestle and run around the house, playfully growling at each other. "Hi, guys." Alexis says to everybody, already dressed in blue jeans and a pink t-shirt.

"Big sissy!" Lily shouts from her father's arm.

Alexis smiles when she hears Lily call for her and bends over when Lily flys out of her dad's arms as soon as she's let down to the floor. Lily hugs Alexis tightly as her husband looks on from behind. "Happy Birthday."

"Thank you!"

"Hey, Alexis," Kate says as she turns in her husband's arm to lean her back into his side. Alexis looks up with a smile. "Lily is _very _excited to spend the day with you today." She hints.

"Yeah?" Alexis says and looks down to her little sister. "Me and Ethan are taking Eddy and Sasha out to play first. Why don't I help you get dressed and you can come with us."

"Okay!" Lily says and darts down the hall and up the stairs.

Alexis looks over to her parents with a smile before going after her, getting a mouthed thank you from Kate. Her husband calls for their dog, who's on his back wrestling with Sasha for the upper hand, and quickly springs to his feet and energetically prances over to him to play. He ushers the dogs outside through the back, smiling at Kate and Rick before getting jumped on from the side by Sasha. Thankfully, Eddy, Alexis's and Ethan's pure Siberian Husky, is very good about staying within sight of them, and Sasha doesn't wander when she's with Eddy. They adopted him just after their honeymoon as a puppy and they've been head over heels for the puppy ever since.

"I feel guilty." Kate whispers to her husband, listening for Alexis's and Lily's footsteps coming back down the stairs.

"Well, stop it," Rick whispers back, pressing his lips to her hair. "You know how difficult it is to get around your guilt?"

"I'm aware of how difficult it is," Kate urges through clenched teeth, crossing her arms, "but just because the test said it was today I... this is Lily's _birthday, _Rick!" She says in a harsh whisper.

"Honey," He says sweetly, snaking both his arms around her and cuddling her, "we've been having this talk about over a year... and I don't want that other bedroom to stay a guest bedroom forever."

"Okay!" Alexis signals their arrival from down the hall and comes out with Lily fully dressed in a pair of jeans and a green sweatshirt. "We're going for a nice long walk with Eddy and Sasha, then we'll take you out for some breakfast."

Lily jumps in the air excitedly and makes a mad dash for the back door, while Alexis looks up to her parents with a smile. She leans in to press a kiss to Dad's cheek. "Thank you, pumpkin."

Kate gives Alexis a smile when she reaches over to put a hand on her shoulder. Rick and Kate turn to watch their daughter run through the yard after the dogs in loving reverence. Kate cuddles herself into her husband's side and lays her head down on his shoulder when Alexis slides the back door closed. They watch for another few long moments before they see Eddy start running towards the woods and Sasha run after him, then Lily walk next to Alexis after them.

Just as everyone is out of sight, they both turn and slam their lips together in a snap of electrifying passion, wrapping their arms around each other and clawing at each other's backs wildly. "Mmm..." she moans at her husband's amazing lips, still just as soft as they were when they first kissed in a dark, soggy ally outside a dirty warehouse. "I still feel guilty."

"Mmm," he groans and twists her head with his hand on her jaw to deepen their kiss, "well, stop it." He tells her again.

She lets his lips go with a wet pluck, tugging his bottom lip with her before looking up to him with darkened, hungry eyes. "This is happening." She says forcefully, taking his hand. "Go."

They rush up the stairs and he only stops them when he pulls her by the hand and spins her around, rushing forward and taking her lips again, lifting her up by her legs. 'Mmm!" She moans and throws her arms around his neck, kissing him as hard as she can before he throws them both down onto the bed. She claws at his back, yanking up on his shirt and pulling it off him to reveal his toned chest, still just as muscular after all these years and goes back to feasting on his mouth. "Kissing you really helps."

"I couldn't agree more." He says and moves down to her neck.

After just two motions, her body rocks and she wraps her legs around his waist and pulls him down to the bed and straddles him, her hands pressing eagerly into his chest. "Test said it was today."

"Honey, we've been trying for a year now."

"And the test said I'm ovulating today." She encourages him, reaching up to put a soft, caring hand on his jaw. "I want another baby, Rick." She almost demands him. "And we have to be _very _sure that we do it right."

He chuckles, "I think both of us are very well versed in how to correctly achieve what it is you're looking for."

"Yeah, well," she shrugs, "we conceived Lily when we are arguing with each other so..." she pants, "maybe we should start fighting with each other."

But Rick feels himself pause as he looks up to her eager smile and watches her lift her brow expectantly... like she's serious. He takes a calming breath and slowly reaches up, brushing her hair behind her ear and reaching down to her left hand, showing her the rings on her finger. "You spent two months fighting with me to put this ring on your finger, Kate."

She feels her heart swell and entwines their fingers together, a happy, watery smile coming onto her face as she looks down to her engagement ring.

He smiles up at her with love shining in his eyes. "We've done enough fighting."

_**THE END**_


End file.
